13 June 2009 -
Brothers
Brother-in-law makes music ( ). Step-brother-in-law writes stories ().
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19 May 2009 -
Night Terrors
We were recently woken by Elise crying at 2am. Martha went into the kids room to see what the issue was...
Martha: What's wrong, why are you crying?
Elise: There's something in my bed.
Martha: A spider?
Elise: I don't know.
Martha: Was it big?
Elise: Yeah.
Martha: How big?
Elise: Like a bunny.
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26 April 2009 -
The Solace of St. Paul, Part 1
Henry McNamara, Irish immigrant and proprietor of a small but successful furniture design shop in Saint Paul, recently huffed, puffed and blew down thirty birthday candles in the company of his wife and two young children. Although he genuinely enjoyed the party and the love he has for his family is infallible, he sees nothing seminal about turning thirty. He felt the same when he turned eighteen, twenty-one, and twenty-five and so considering this trend he will almost certainly demonstrate equal ambivalence toward forty, fifty, sixty and seventy-five and maybe even eighty if he is still around. There are people who believe time stops for them alone so that they, alone, can bask in a numerical milestone that is ironically being shared by millions of others at the exact same moment. Time does not stop or slow for anyone and that comforts Henry inexpressibly.
If Henry is anything he is brutally nostalgic about the very recent past, which he defines as an emotional sphere of events experienced in the last five minutes to forty-eight hours. Lying in bed at night he is frequently brought to the brink of joyous tears as he reflects on, word by word and squeal by squeal, a rambling phone conversation he had that day with his daughters while he was at work. There is something wonderfully delicate about their purity and lack of concern for the meaning of time. His almost-tears are not because he wishes to live perpetually in that moment but because he wants to understand why emotionally significant incidents older than two days, those that fall outside the sphere, tend to quickly fade from memory.
The anxiety is usually put to rest when he reassures himself that these short term memory issues are the result of his vices but whether it is the medically prescribed or the self prescribed ones that are the true root cause he cannot tell, nor does he really care. He has sufficient control over the situation that it needs only minimal and infrequent attention.
Henry empathizes with the type of people that society has labeled as losers. He always has. He always will. He realizes that the unfortunates he empathizes with were once decent souls. In fact, the measure of their souls is probably unchanged but this callously contrasts with their new societal categorization. Henry is acutely aware that whatever sequence of inconvenient events transformed these people could come knocking on his door at any minute.
He secretly enjoys the proximity of the reaper. He even teases it from time to time, like a foolhardy boy pulling on the tail of a dog eating a bone. Some kind of hair trigger discipline pulls him back just at the point where the mutt could snap, every time. He sees the possibility of becoming a loser as opportunity! The idea of being toppled and having to rebuild from rubble is rather appealing to him. Weaknesses in the original architecture could be addressed second time around, better choices could be made, regrets from round one could be turned into conquests in round two…
Henry enjoys these self-hypnotic thought trains that have no origin or destination or sustainable fuel source for that matter. They always run out of steam. This does not depress him one bit. Many things do but this does not, not one bit. Dreaming is human nature. Its purpose is something that not even the smartest of us may ever understand.
The invisible axis that he stands so close to, who’s crossing would govern what he could become reaffirms to Henry that there is reason, fairness, balance and possibly even justice in the world. You just have to be aware of it.
He slugs the last of the tea, now tepid, turns his back on the large window of his workshop and resumes attaching the drawer slides to the cabinet he is building for a new customer. Drinking tea and staring out the window won’t pay the bills he reminds himself.
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25 April 2009 -
I Killed It
Today is the day that I officially ended my bitter relationship with the incompetent shit-monkeys at Credo Mobile (). Myself and the wife got our iPhone's last week and we have been patiently waiting on the transfer of our numbers over to AT&T. The transfer was completed today. To fully verify this I used my old phone to try and make a call. Like music to my ears the robotic automated reply informed me that "your account is no longer active".
I was driving at the time, on University Avenue in St. Paul. I hooked a left and turned into the industrial area near our house, where the streets are empty and screams go ignored. I passed some haggard souls making their way back to the halfway house by the train tracks. Poor bastards. Those men are the epitome of the down trodden.
I accelerated up to 50mph, opened the window all the way and with a stone skimming motion I fucked my old phone out the window. It was beautiful. I wish you had of been there. The phone made a very low angle with the asphalt and launched itself upward but the motion was brutally arrested by the kerb against which the phone blew to smither-fucking-eens. Emotions akin to witnessing the birth of my children rushed over me. The moment was that special. Serenity soon followed.
I drove home, kissed my wife, lay on the couch, drank some tea and basked in murderous glory.
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11 April 2009 -
Cooking
There are things we do in our own company that should remain private, and for legitimate reasons, outsiders just wouldn’t understand. From time to time (at least weekly) a reckless confidence fueled by alcohol leads me to surmise that my partner will most likely enjoy witnessing one of these acts of depravity first hand. She’d be fuckin’ stupid not to love me for doing this, right?
My lovely wife made some really extraordinary fried egg rolls for dinner last night. Those not devoured spent the night in the fridge. Eighteen hours later whilst seeking an appetizer to supplement my Saturday lunchtime beer I retrieved the cold egg rolls from the fridge. We own no microwave. The oven takes at least 10 minutes to heat up. The broiler sets off the smoke alarms and wakes the sleeping children. Crisis.
Solution. Fill a dirty mug with boiling water. Place two egg rolls into a plastic bag and sink the bag into the mug full of water. The egg rolls are smarter than thought and use their buoyancy to try and escape the mug so a knife, covered in hours old butter, is placed over the rim of the mug thus preventing unwarranted bobbing.
Razor sharp intuition and Q=mcΔt tells me that after approximately three minutes sufficient energy transfer will have taken place so that the egg rolls can be removed from the cooking apparatus and appreciated. The equations prove to be spot on, as per fuckin' usual, and the egg rolls are subsequently eaten.
That’s my life. That's cooking, divorce style.
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10 April 2009 -
iPhones For All
Hostage negotiations with the evil Credo Mobile () were successful. Martha (the fuckin' genius) got us out of our contract, sans ransom. Within an hour of our liberation we joined AT&T and procured an iPhone each. The future starts toady.
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02 April 2009 -
Maple Syrup 2009
More news on this later ().
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30 March 2009 -
Phone Dicks
Never, never, never get a phone contract with Credo Mobile (). It will be the stupidest thing you ever do. I am two months from the end of a two year contract that has been nothing short of emotionally crippling. I am literally shaking with hate as I write this. What a bunch of fuckin' idiots. Enjoy bankruptcy you worthless fuckin' shit-monkeys.
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21 March 2009 -
Father, Daughter, Fire, Popcorn
Spring came to Minnesota this week. The lakes may still have a thin coat of ice on them but spring is here, end o' fuckin' story. Elise and I spent the evening out in the back garden. We both enjoy the occasional outdoor fire in the wood-stove. It's a thing we have together. Some people, namely my brother-in-law, have their garbage piles () but I have my father and daughter fires.
We made popcorn on the cast iron beast that Fran () gave me a few years back. Pure fun. I'm thinking that next weekend we'll make pancakes.
Fire has the same mesmeric effect on the young (her) as it does on the old (me). That really interests me. Elise is a typical kid; she is energetic and hard to pin down for any amount of time but once we are sitting by that blazing fire she becomes a philosopher, poet and observer of all things celestial. I love that kid.
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12 March 2009 -
Noah
Noah, my step-brother-in-law, has a blog. This () is my favorite post to date. There are two things he should do, in MY opinion; get a haircut and write a book.
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10 March 2009 -
Bag of Shite
I'm at home, sick, with a stomach flu that at its height was how I imagined those afflicted with typhoid must feel. Vomiting, diarrhea, sweating, confusion, falling over, talking with spirits were the order of the night. Comical at times, oh yes indeed. I'm on the way back now and should be able to return to work tomorrow.
The kids are in bed and the old lady is out buying thread for a sewing commission so I am feckin' around on the internet. Snow is falling heavily outside. There is nothing, and I repeat nothing, like persistent snow from November to April to lift a man's heart.
Anywho, a couple of links ((), (), (), (), ()), for the craic.
I almost forgot the good news amid all that feces drenched misery... Next month I will finally, and I repeat finally, own an iPhone ().
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22 February 2009 -
Wiggilator
I made a Wiggilator (). It's a bunch of springs mounted onto a board. You whack it, it oscillates like crazy, you laugh, it comes to rest, you move on. Soon everyone will want one. I will make millions of dollars. I will take my family out for Chinese food. It will be good.
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21 February 2009 -
Book Readin'
The Information Age has taken a heavy toll on my ability to read text in any form and of any significant length. My attention span has been so truncated that I struggle to read the little pieces of paper inside fortune cookies. That's really pathetic. I'm fighting back though. I am making a serious effort to read documents of ever increasing content and complexity. ATM receipts, error messages on machines at work, IKEA furniture assembly instructions, mortgage refinance documents and the occasional book are now being devoured with a hunger not felt since the late 90's and early 00's. That was an era when consuming the entire Foundation series by Issac Asimov in six months was nothing. Also during those years of enlightenment I burned through the works of Hanif Kureishi, John McGahern, Arthur Miller, Patrick Kavanagh and various American authored short story collections.
It's not really an attention span issue that drove me away from books to be honest. I've been thinking about this for a year or so and have made some conclusions. It was an imagination problem. I could no longer attach faces to characters in books, they were just names, and when the book had more than five characters it became impossible to follow the storyline because all the faceless subjects got mixed up in my head. An attempt to read a Douglas Coupland book ended after 25 pages of frustration and complete confusion. I was no longer able to handle excessive detail and side plots and sub plots. I wanted the meat and none of the side crap.
Maybe I have been reading the wrong stuff during these last few years. Perhaps the mental effort that my job often requires (nobody was kind enough to preemptively inform me that the trigonometry, vector mechanics, machine design classes I took at college would ever be put to good use) has rendered my mind spent at the end of the day such that I take more pleasure from kid's books (Spot Goes To The Farm, Spot Loves Mommy, Spot Gets Hammered, Spot Gets Divorced, Spot Is Homeless, Spot Dies... I made up a few of those) than from my own. Hey, maybe I'm just thick and was never meant to read.
No, I'm not thick, just slow at times. Like I said at the start of this rant I have been fighting back. In the last two months I have managed to read more books than I have read in the previous five years.
Recently read: Joe Wilson and His Mates by Henry Lawson, Children of The Bush by Henry Lawson, Introduction to Fluid Mechanics by Fox, McDonald and Pritchard, Born Standing Up by Steve Martin, Mere Anarchy by Woody Allen, Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists by Casey Reas and Ben Fry.
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17 February 2009 -
Missing Éire
The Wife: Are you homesick?
Me: No, why?
The Wife: You're listening to RTÉ online () and talking about getting drunk and eating chips in the rain.
Me: Maybe I am.
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31 January 2009 -
Basement Shenanigans
The basement is my winter shed. I really need to be down there building a bench and some shelves. Instead I have been making scrap wood collages (). Plenty of time to be whipping up shelves and benches I keep telling myself. Plenty o' time...
Scrap Collage One, 7" x 8".
Scrap Collage Two, 7" x 14".
Scrap Collage Three, 13" x 13".
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18 January 2009 -
Art Shanty Project
Early last Sunday we rolled out from our cosy nest, tossed some breakfast into the spuds and drove out to Medicine Lake which is about two miles from where I work and a good dozen or so miles from our home in St. Paul. Reason? To see the Art Shanty Project (, ) which is in its third year now.
We rapped on the door of the first shanty we were able to confirm whose inhabitants were open for business. Elise, with her unique brand of blatant cuteness (pink coat and pink snow boots always do it) befriended the band of out of town hippies () who are holed up for the next few weeks, on the lake, in a reconstruction of an upturned boat that Ernest Shackleton () and his pals called home during an ill fated trek to the North Pole. Unlike Ernest the hippies have a well stocked bar, wood-stove and access to infinite fuel, phones and cars to use for voyages into Minneapolis should the bright city lights become more appealing that the blinking stars high above Medicine Lake, Minnesota.
A strange and far flung bunch, none of them local. Canada, Washington, West Virginia, North Carolina, San Francisco were all represented. Elise, being kind of quiet due to her confusion at the situation, was brought to life with a tortilla filled with melted chocolate chips. One of the artists whipped it up for her on the top of the wood-stove. Chocolate being the elixir of shyness, the hippies were soon gathered around our first born as she answered their questions and spun deep yarns of her own.
I'd be a damn liar if I said I wasn't tempted to put my Joseph of Nazareth mad carpentry skills to work on a shanty. Lord only knows I've built a wee hut () or two in my day. I've frequently caught myself dreaming of a collection of funny little houses dotted around our back garden. Maybe even a few up in the oak tree or the catalpa trees. No, I don't have an ounce of faith in those catalpa tress. The squirrels have cored them out completely. A decent puff of wind would bring them down. The oak tree is a different story. Its strength is not to be questioned. It could handle a hoard of kids for sure. I will continue to refine the blueprints during these long winter months. Winter is when you plan all the cool things you are going to do between May and November, the outside months.
If you live in a part of the world where the lakes are frozen with ice two feet thick for a third of the year, every year, then I think a shanty project should be adopted by your community. Why not? A frozen lake is an opportunity to do things that disturb the insanity and cruelty of an Arctic winter. I'm actually getting into it. It took a few years of teetering on the edge of SAD () but I have a new attitude, a decent coat, boots and snow pants so I can be outside as much as I so desire even on days like today (-22°C as I type). Winter is opportunity. Native midwesterners () only see it that way. I just have to catch up on 23 years of not thinking that way.
Next weekend, igloo () building. I'm not joking.
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10 January 2009 -
Our kids
I love this () photo. Taken on October 31st, 2008. Elise and Clara are in their Halloween costumes. Elise is a duck and Clara is a bowling pin. Elise is pushing Clara in the swing that hangs from one of the catalpa tree in our back garden. In the center of the picture the sun is catching the autumn-blessed vines that grow on the side of our house. They are not aware that I am taking their picture.
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07 January 2009 -
Essay by Woody Allen
In case the link someday stops working I have copy and pasted the entire essay below. Incredible stuff. Now this () is what they call real writing.
THINK HARD, IT’LL COME BACK TO YOU
by Woody Allen
(Appeared in The New Yorker, November 10th 2008)
As health-food stores go, the Hardened Artery is as steady as any. Perusing its pricey nutrients last week in quest of some vitalizing herb or root to flush out a family of free radicals that had built their nest in my chassis, I came vis-à-vis a bottle of red fluid nestled like a krait between the ginseng and the echinacea and sporting the Ray Bradburyish title “Brainiac.” Plucked from its niche, it claimed to be a thirst quencher chockablock with gingko biloba and sundry antioxidants reputed to enhance memory. “Think quick,” the label copy spieled. “Where are your car keys? Cue television game-show music. The mind docs at Function developed Brainiac to help in these situations.” On the label, in letters clearly visible to anyone possessing an electron microscope, followed the sheepish admission that the claims of the miracle apéritif had not yet been examined by the Food and Drug Administration and “the product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.” Whether it might be used to remove gravy stains or unclog a drain remains untested. Still, this notion of a neuron-recharging elixir brought to mind thoughts of my esteemed colleague Murray Cipher, as he prepared to go out for dinner. Mustn’t be late to the Wasserfiends’ party. Classy crowd. No lungfish caviar tonight. Upward mobility? Vice-presidency for old Murray? Imagine—twenty-four exterminators working under me. Mind-boggling. How do I look? Only great. New necktie should wow ’em, although the pattern of multiple G clefs may be too hip for the room. Searched for the perfect birthday present for Mr. Wasserfiend. Amazing, but Hammacher Schlemmer is the only place in town that carries a Jarvik Heart with a compartment for fish hooks. But, look at this, in my haste to be on time I almost bolted out the door without his gift. Let’s see, where did I put it? Hmm. Was it on the foyer table? Not here in the drawer. Did I leave it in the bedroom? Check my night table—so damn cluttered. Reading lamp, alarm clock, Kleenex, shoe horn, my copy of Hui-Neng’s “Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch.” Glove compartment of the Saab? Better race out and see. Raining. Oh, brother, a scratch on the fender. Damn rabbi on his unicycle. Wait a minute, where are my car keys? Could have sworn I left them in this pocket. No, just some loose change and ticket stubs from the all-black version of Elaine Stritch’ s one-woman show. Did I check my desk? Better go back inside. What’s in the top drawer here? Hmm. Envelopes, my paper clips, a loaded revolver in case the tenant in 2A begins yodelling again. O.K., let’s reconstruct. This morning I drove to Smallbone’s to have my toupee steamed, stopped off at Stebbins’s home to return his arch supports, then to my bagpipe lesson.
Hey, wait a minute, that little starlet I shacked up with who always took melatonin to prevent jet lag when we had sex—she used to nosh some kind of Buck Rogers health snack. Yes, Cranial Pops. Supposed to zap the memory. Could she have even left some in the cupboard? Ah, here—what does it say on the bag? “Untested by Food and Drug Administration—May cause drowsiness in men named Seymour.” I’ll just try a few. Hmm, nice flavor. I love the taste of soy phosphatidylserine. Have some more?
Now, where was I? Oh, yes, of course, I left Mr. Wasserfiend’s gift at the office. My secretary, Miss Facework, to meet me with it at the party. Car keys in gray cashmere cardigan on second hanger in hall closet. Remember the day I bought that cardigan, sixteen years ago. A Tuesday. I was wearing beige slacks and a Sulka button-down oxford shirt. Gray socks. Shoes from Flagg Brothers. Had lunch with Sol Kashflow, the hedge-fund whiz. Sol ordered the halibut with buttered peas and julienne potatoes. His beverage white wine, a ’64 Bâtard-Montrachet, which I recall was a tad fruity. Finished off with lime sorbet and two after-dinner mints—or was it three? Funny thing, he hardly touched his meal. Too excited because Amalgamated Permafrost had just merged with a company that had developed a process to make steel into henbane. To celebrate I got the check. Fifty-six dollars and ninety-eight cents. Hardly worth it, since my langoustines were overcooked.
To the Wasserfiends’ party at last. Just on time. Everybody well dressed. Champagne flowing. Cocktail pianist. “Avalon.” Same song playing that night in Vineyard Haven with Lillian Waterfowl. Slipped out of her bathing suit. Naked goddess. Tore off my clothes with her long nails. Our two bodies straining with desire. Moved in on her like a panther. About to consummate passion, when suddenly my leg cramped. Left calf? No, right. Let out piercing shriek, leaped off her. Hopped around room, face contorted with pain. What struck her so damn funny? Christ, the woman was doubled up with laughter. Accused me of ruining the moment. Schlemiel, she called me, nudnik. Couldn’t run to the phone fast enough to share the story with our friends. Let her rot with her embezzler husband. The man tries to hide six million dollars in small denominations in his shoe.
Brings to mind Hornblow evening. Haven’t thought of it in fifteen years. Watched Effluvia Hornblow baking in her kitchen. Asa Hornblow in the other room bombinating his chums about the Red Sox. They split a doubleheader with the Tigers that day, taking the opener, 6–2, then dropping the nightcap, 4–0. Heard their voices, good old boys arguing balls and strikes. Bent her over the sink to lance my tongue between her smoldering lips. Suddenly necktie caught in the Mixmaster. Switch jammed, wouldn’t turn off. Plug inaccessible behind refrigerator. Kept snapping my head against the marble backsplash. Remember witnessing birth of the great Crab Nebula. Emergency Squad. Taken away in an ambulance. For two weeks could speak only in rhymed couplets, smiled often, plus every ten minutes greased my body for a Channel swim. Hermès tie it was. Sixty-nine ninety-five, and that was then.
Look at Mrs. Wasserfiend sitting there, so elegant. Black Armani dress, simple pearls and those dramatic earrings—two Jivaro shrunken heads with their lips sewn together. Makes me think of Grandma. Always sitting there playing cards with Grandpa. Cheated him blind. Finally he went blind in one eye and she could only cheat half of him. Grandpa very brilliant, spent fifteen years translating “Anna Karenina” into pig Latin. Remember the day Grandpa collapsed, June 8th, 6:16 P.M. Misdiagnosed as dead and embalmed despite his clear ability to shimmy and sing “Rag Mop.” Grandma sold the house and devoted her life to serving God. Applied for sainthood but was turned down because she couldn’t parallel park.
Pianist is playing “You Made Me Love You.” Remember always hearing that song when Mom was pregnant with me. Dad used to sing it to himself in the mirror all day long. Recall Mom giving birth to me in a taxicab. Meter ran four-eighty. Cabbie was Israel Moscowitz. Talkative. Referred to his wife as a fat pot of kasha. Remember my parents expected twins. Crushed when there was only one of me. Couldn’t deal with it. First few years dressed me as twins. Two hats, four shoes. To this day they still inquire about Chester.
Thank you for a wonderful evening, Mrs. Wasserfiend. Oh, and the name you were trying to think of when we were discussing the life of Emily Dickinson before was Bronko Nagurski. Out of there just in time. Cranial Pops starting to wear off. Still, no question I was the hit of the party. Came up with Gouda cheese. Lava soap. Got Leo Gorcey and Julien Sorel. Managed to recite the Philippics verbatim. Recalled the Schrafft’s on Fifty-seventh and Third. Hummed Mousie Powell’s theme song. Got Menachem Schneerson, the Sons of the Pioneers. Gyp the Blood. Now, where the hell did I park my car?
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31 December 2008 -
Ouch!
Disclaimer: The injury shown in the photo below is the result of a workplace accident that was 100% my fault. In this country that has more than one million lawyers it might seem tempting to place the blame on my employer and attempt to extract some undeserved quantity of cash. Not the way I operate although I'm positive every Lionel Hutz () scumbag-type-lawyer in town would love to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court. I'm glad not to have lost the finger and my respect/fear for the wire braiding machines I work with on a daily basis has grown even greater. I really enjoy my job and want to keep it, whether it costs me a few fingers or not.
For a week after the accident I was taking Percocet () for pain relief. I have to say that I enjoyed it. It provided adequate respite from the ringing pain in the finger but the constipation, fatigue, dizziness, nausea, lightheadedness, headache, euphoria, dry mouth and anxiety gets old kind of fast. Combine all that with a six pack of Pabst and you've got yourself a very emotional one man party. One minute you're up, then next you're asleep for 15 hours. Days slip by. Boredom, idleness and work-absence-guilt kicks in. Party's over, get back to work. And I did.
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21 December 2008 -
The good life
Sunday night. Drinking relatively cheap beer and watching Conan O'Brien clips on YouTube. Does it get any better than this? You bet your hole it does not.
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09 December 2008 -
Lyonsy
Rest in peace Lyonsy. You'll be missed very much by the world. That's all I can say.
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23 November 2008 -
Score!
I scored an absolutely obscene amount of old skirting board, door frame, trim and coving today. It's all antique white with just the right amount of decay and chipping. Perfect for furniture making (). Once again the Prospect Park neighborhood () where we used to live has blessed me. I'm very excited to dig through the pile and start figuring out what I can make. I now have an abundance of materials that should see me through the next three pieces at least. Everything is comin' up Milhouse! And while I'm feeling cocky I suppose I should share the fact that I made three strikes in a row at bowling this morning. They calls that a turkey they do. A feckin' good day. USA! USA! USA!
And now to celebrate... few beers, some Buck65, a few articles from American Craft magazine. Sad, I know, I'm fully aware of that. We all bear a cross.
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18 November 2008 -
Wood Pixels
I've wanted to get into the making of wooden pixel () art for a few years. Now is as good a time as ever. I transplanted my woodworking operation to the basement of our house since the shed is now a freezer in which no honest man deserves to try and get stuff done. It's winter and it's cold. End of story.
The stairs down to the basement are steep and narrow thus limiting the size of projects that can be accomplished in that secret underground lair of tea and radio and dreaming. It is completely true that I have no clear idea of how I can make the leap from methodically cutting up scrap wood to a finished work. Sometimes the process is as enjoyable and important as the end result. I'm an engineer, not an artist. Striving for absolute uniformity as I cut the little squares imposes self discipline and I like that.
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06 November 2008 -
Helix
While working on a helix () related problem at work today I came across this definition:
"A helix is a curve for which the tangent makes a constant angle with a fixed line. The shortest path between two points on a cylinder (one not directly above the other) is a fractional turn of a helix, as can be seen by cutting the cylinder along one of its sides, flattening it out, and noting that a straight line connecting the points becomes helical upon re-wrapping. It is for this reason that squirrels chasing one another up and around tree trunks follow a helical path."
Wikipedia
The squirrel analogy is 100% true. We have millions of the little shit-monkeys in our back garden and I have often see them do the helical chase around the oak tree.
Squirrel-centric analogies are key to my survival in the modern workplace.
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05 November 2008 -
Popperville
Apparently there was some kind of election yesterday here in America. Who knew? St. Paul, my adopted home town, tends to be a bit of a quiet/sedate/unconscious/dead place to live and particularly so as we prepare for another long-drawn-out winter. Major world events often slip by St. Paul without much notice from those that serenely dwell within her leafy enclaves. There are times when I wake up believing that I live in the fictitious town of Popperville (). I’m fine with that. In fact, I aspire to that. My universe is small (family, work, shed and drinking in that order) so I have little free time to keep up with what is going on two towns over, never mind further afield.
But in an effort to wise up and be an informed citizen I’ve done some post-election research on this Obama guy and I like what I see. These are indeed exciting times… if you live anywhere but St. Paul, Minnesota of course.
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02 November 2008 -
Crazy Kidz
There are times when I worry that my kids ((), (), ()) are actually and officially insane. No, they just have imaginations sans corners. Must be nice.
The Polaroids are by Martha () of course.
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27 October 2008 -
Oregon
Pictures from Oregon this summer (). That's where Noah and Tegan (Martha's step-brother and his wife) live. What a cool state they live in. Volcanoes, high desert, ancient forests, misty coastal towns, pedestrian friendly cities, good food and beer... What more could a man want?
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26 October 2008 -
Kalifornia
Some pictures from our West Coast trip this summer (). Why the fuck did I not take some pictures on the beach at Redwood Forest National Park? Idiot. Beautiful place. The weather was so interesting, and emotional to be honest.
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25 October 2008 -
Door
Martha found this amazing old door () in an alley in our neighborhood. I am in the process of building it into a new closet for our foyer. That's right, the Dunne's have a foyer, not a hall. Hall's are for common folk.
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14 October 2008 -
Tiny House 2
Ideas are forming for this next big project. This will be the adult version of the playhouse already built () for the kids.
Slowly but surely found/donated/salvaged/swiped/whatever building materials are finding their way from the streets into my car and then to the shed, the final holding place for all the beautiful things the city has given to me.
I have pretty much decided on the proportions of the front elevation, 4' x 7'. Not sure on depth yet. Maybe 6'.
Sitting on an idea for a few months before executing it is almost as pleasurable as enjoying the finished project. I am learning patience. Stupid mistakes and the resulting sadness can be avoided this way. Small mistakes still find their way into the job but those are important.
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05 October 2008 -
Not with it
Sometime in 2005 we "dropped out" of popular culture. The Dunne's don't own a TV. Correct, there is no television in our house. Again, there is no device within our four walls that contains a cathode ray tube. We are still unsure what was so popular about that culture.
How do we live? Like feckin' animals ()... and we love it.
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01 October 2008 -
Erik Otto
We nearly bought some work by Erik Otto ((), ()) this summer on our trip to the west coast. I still need to write a story about the trip because it was bloody fantastic. The hostel in San-San-Sico (as Elise calls it) that we stayed in was one block away from a new gallery where we saw the Otto show.
The quality and originality of the work nearly brought tears to me eyes. I'm weak like that. When you haven't got the words to express how you feel you may as well cry like a girl.
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27 September 2008 -
Storage solutions
Here's a snapshot of some ideas bubbling around in my head () for the next big project, after I get the kitchen cabinet job () completed. Better get the finger out, winter is around the corner.
While on a recent family excursion to the Bell Museum of Natural History on the U of M campus () both Martha and I took a shine to some old display cases that housed bones and rocks and the like. The proportions were perfect. I'd like to build something like this for our dining room. The function would be slightly different. Instead of displaying artifacts we would have books mixed in with art objects. My take on what I saw at the museum would be to have three to five individual storage units, each the exact same size but with variations in the materials used and construction method of each.
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26 September 2008 -
Stacking Boxes
Not sure where this idea is going or if the concept is even worthy of turning into reality. What you have is a set of different sized boxes all mounted on a pole. Each box can swivel 360°. The pole is secured in a concrete cube for stability.
Back to the drawing board. Comments or suggestions welcome.
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25 September 2008 -
The Tiny House
Here's () a story about the playhouse I built this summer for the kids. I posted about this before () but thought I should add some more detail and photos.
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18 September 2008 -
Short back and sides
I got a flyer today for a free hair cut at SportsClips (). Odd concept but seems to make solid marketing sense. Only in America...
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06 September 2008 -
Craft in Ireland
A very inspiring article in American Craft Magazine () provided me with some must see things for when we are in Ireland next summer.
Check out the breathtaking woodturning of Liam Flynn ().
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05 September 2008 -
Make
Here's () a story about some furniture I am making for the kitchen. The weather is getting perfect for working up a thirst in the shed.
So many plans so little time! Wait, I have a good 50 or so years in me so there is no reason I can't someday become the full time furniture maker I dream of being.
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04 September 2008 -
Yes We Can
It's September 5th 2008. It's 9:15PM, Central Time. It's St. Paul, Minnesota, my beloved new home town. It's the last night of the Republican National Convention. My wife and mother in law went on their bikes to downtown St. Paul to peacefully (hopefully) protest the RNC. A really old man is giving a speech. His name is John McCain. He is a hero for all the wrong reasons. He dropped bombs on villages in Vietnam from the safety of 20,000 feet above the earth and then was stupid enough to get shot down. Martha often preaches the creed of karma. She is never wrong. Nearly everything I have learned in life I have learned from her. I am more serious than a dream-job-ironed-the-night-before-interview-shirt.
Supposedly this speech marks a historical moment. This Irish-American is displaying his indifference to history by turning off the radio, having a fire in the backyard, downing a six pack of beer and crushing beer cans in the vise to see if a perfect collapse of the cylindrical form can be achieved without buckling. I am also listening to old Christy Moore songs (In Zurich, The Lakes of Pontchartrain, Little Musgrave) on my iPod while I stumble in and out of the shed. My beautiful children sleep in their beds without care for the waste of energy taking place in downtown St. Paul. Bless the little clowns!
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11 August 2008 -
Andy Goldsworthy
A couple of months ago an extremely important event, possibly sacred even, occurred in my life. I made this crude post () about a few of the living (or not long dead) artists that create the kind of art that stirs unquantifiable levels of optimism inside of me. I don't understand it and probably never will. Maybe that's the point. When you can see all sides of an object then there is nothing left to generate wonder, so you walk away. The object doesn't seem so big anymore. You move on. The event that took place made me stand still... and I have not moved one inch since. I'm transfixed beyond words. That rarely happens, thank God.
Emmet () commented on the post with a suggestion that I investigate the work of one Andy Goldworthy (). Emmet's tips are typically the stuff of legend and this one didn't fall short of the mark. What makes the story interesting (to me anyway, not sure about you) is that many weeks later while in Waupaca for the weekend at Fran and Marci's I found myself bored, I think. The kids had gone to bed, everyone else was out. I was tired. I had worked a full day back in the Twin Cities then drove four and a half hours () from work straight to Waupaca. Working my way through a cold six pack and sitting with the dogs on the couch a DVD on the shelf caught my gaze. An Andy Goldsworthy DVD, Rivers and Tides () was tucked between all the other DVD's. I put down me beer and slapped it on.
I would only embarrass myself if I tried to further explain what this has all meant to me. Words are too limiting. I can't put the right ones together to create a meaningful whole.
Goldsworthy's divorce from his wife and the breakup of his family (he has four young kids) temporarily soured the art for me. I love my wife and kids so much and would have no idea what to do if ever we became divided. It saddens me to see unhappiness visit anyones door but his family situation is not my business so I have no reason to judge. It was interesting to hear him say on the Rivers and Tides DVD that he enjoyed being alone and then to see him (on same DVD) at his kitchen table oblivious to the kids and pets that were milling around him in a scene of domestic normality. He wore the appearance of an man loosing touch with the mortal world.
Perhaps he just couldn't supply the energy and commitment needed to play a role as a family member. Creating immortal art cannot be easy.
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09 August 2008 -
Spud Girl
Once a month or so Martha makes a fantastic potato based dish called "Potatoes O'Brien" (). Elise has renamed it "The Potatoes Are Crying" so I always laugh when I hear that we are having Potatoes O'Brien for dinner. It's the way she says it that makes it so cute. Love that kid.
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05 July 2008 -
Craic House
The years fly by don't they? It seems like only yesterday that I had two small kids in the house. Yep, Elise and Clara have flown the nest and decided to move out... to the garden.
I built this shack for them. Actually, that's a poor reflection on my carpentry skills. This is a fine home that any kid would be proud to own. In fact, small adults (such as me) have been known to enjoy a bowl of ice cream or two within those four walls.
And now onto the next project... cutting the feckin' grass.
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03 July 2008 -
West Coast 2008
It's nearly time to go on our summer vacation. Excitement is mounting, and it should be. This will be a cool trip (). Take no prisoners, take no shit, take lots of pictures, eat lots of salmon cooked on the fire by Tegan, spend lots of money, build family memories, collect beach glass for a bathroom mosaic back at home, drink lots of beer, avoid starting another wildfire, be a dick, be a nice guy, see it all, eat M&M's in a different time zone, take a piss in a new ocean...
A
Fly from Minneapolis, MN to Portland, OR. See flag A on linked map. Stay three nights in a hostel in the city. Dwell magazine had plenty of great things to say about this city. Let's see if print media can match reality.
B
Drive from Portland to Mount Hood, OR. See flag B on linked map. Camp for three nights, in a tent and not in an air conditioned RV with six bathrooms, a basement, a tennis court, a billiards room... Yes we are insane thinking that all four of us in a small tent is going to be smooth as Baileys on ice. I need some excitement in my life. Surely this experience will fill the void.
C
Drive from Mount Hood to Eugene, OR. This is Noah and Tegan's adopted town. Cause three nights of trouble in a hostel in the city. See flag C on linked map.
D
Drive from Eugene to Redwood National Park, CA. See flag D on linked map. Stay two nights in a hostel right on the beach. See those giant sequoia trees.
E
Drive from Redwood National Park to San Francisco, CA. Spend four nights there in a hostel smack in the middle of the city. Maybe I will get to visit Alcatraz. It's one of those dreams I have that shouldn't really be classed as a dream. To be honest, I'd take a new iPhone over a trip to The Rock. Fly back to little old St. Paul, MN. Resume regular life possibly sporting a new beard picked up on the trip.
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31 May 2008 -
Clara
Clara has the biggest eyes of anyone I know. They see all.
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05 May 2008 -
The Shop
Support () the arts you bastards!
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26 April 2008 -
Better than I
Without sources of inspiration ((), (), (), (), (), (), (), (), (), ()) what's the point?
Each year I try and accomplish a few projetcs (2007: (), (), ()). It's not easy with winter being six months long and my shed not being heated or insulated but it could be worse. At least I have a shed, eh? The project list for 2008 is slightly longer that last year list but that's the idea. Do a little more every year. Ambition.
The other night I started work on a large kitchen cupboard with countertop that will replace four smaller units. When finished she will measure 50" wide x 84" high x 28" deep. I hope to build her using about 90% found or salvaged materials. I have no definitive design requirements other than the need to fit into the 50" x 84" x 28" envelope and provide a decent amount of countertop area for Martha to make bread. I built the bookcase () last year without a design so I'm sure it will all come together. The trick is to take it easy and stop for frequent tea breaks. It's during the tea drinking that the best ideas come to the furniture maker.
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17 April 2008 -
Whatever
Totally forgot what I wanted to say... half drunk... waste of a blog post, waste of your time, wasted, screw it. Hitting the west coast this summer. Washington, Oregon (), California... All good in the 'hood.
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25 March 2008 -
Maple syrup
Subconsciously I suppose I always knew that maple syrup came from actual maple trees although the exact conversion process never entered my mind. That has all changed now. Martha's folks own 15 acres of land, a decent portion of it being hardwood forest, outside Waupaca, Wisconsin. We got married on that land and are eternally grateful to all that Fran and Marci did to make the "blessed event" be such a memorable day. We visit that land nearly every time we are in Wauapca. I say nearly because deer hunting season makes it off limits. Downtown Baghdad is a safer (and warmer) place than rural Wisconsin when deer huntin' is open. There may be more bullets flying in Baghdad but in Wisconsin there are guns mixed with beer, cheap beer, the kind of beer that is sold in 30 packs for $12 and drank first thing in the morning by both men and women. Yes, that kind of beer.
At the highest elevation and sitting on the western perimeter of the property Fran built by hand and without electricity a 500sqft shed. That was more than 25 years ago. Over time the shed fell to ruin but a few years ago he began to work on it and it is now a half cabin half workshop. It just might be his pride and joy. Should Fran and Marci ever lose their house to a tornado or be driven from town by a torch wielding angry mob due to their political leanings the shed would make a more than feasible new home, a fresh start. There is no internet or running water but $5,000 would be enough to have a well dug to address the water issue... and the internet, it can go to hell, what has it done for anyone lately? The shed is heated by a wood stove with infinite fuel being provided by naturally downed trees in the woods. The land is quite arable so with Fran's insatiable appetite for drudgerous and back breaking labor I would safely say that a parcel of non wooded land could be tilled, with a shovel of course, to grow enough crops to feed a small army. If the lust for red meat should ever darken the door of Fran and Marci then all they would have to do is pick off a few of the deer that graze on the land. Have you ever had freshly killed venison cooked on an open fire? Holy shit is all I can say.
There are hundreds of maple trees in the woods. There may even be thousands but I can't be sure. It's very possible that Fran has conducted a detailed trees census so he would be far better able to quantify the maple population than this urban reporter. Getting the sap, that once boiled down will become syrup, out of the tree is simple, almost so simple that it is counterintuitive.
Step 1: Bore a 9/16" hole about 3" deep into the trunk of the tree at waist height from the ground.
Step 2: With a hammer beat a metal tap into the hole. The tap is basically a piece of tubing that provides a pathway for the sap to run from the tree. While inserting taps myself, Fran and Pat Mahoney speculated that the Native Americans (Indians) could have used animal bones as taps. If the marrow was removed then the bone would function well as a tap. Depending on the size and condition of the tree multiple taps can be put in one tree. The law of diminishing returns applies though. Sometimes it is better to single tap many young trees than to multi-tap a few mature trees but what the hell do I know?
Step 3: Hang a large plastic bag on the tap so that the liquid sap can be collected in the bag.
Step 4: Retreat to Fran's shed and drink some Beck's beer, light the wood stove, eat thick slices of local cheddar cheese and handfuls of non local tortilla chips, be happy doing nothing other than getting lost in the sounds of wood crackling in the fire and the long and lonesome whistle of a passing freight train.
Step 5: Let nature do its work. The freezing nighttime temperatures and mild daytime temperatures stimulate the sap to run from the trees into the collection bags. It's the freeze-thaw action that only allows maple syrup to made in the winter. No, winter is not over yet. It's a six month season. The sap is nothing like the viscous sticky goo from a Christmas tree. Maple tree sap is pretty much water with a small sugar content. That surprised me but it does explain the 30:1 sap to syrup ratio. I tasted some of the sap to validate all the information that Fran and Mahoney were dispensing. No word of a lie was told that day.
Step 6: Consolidate the sap. The collection bags need to be emptied on an almost daily basis. This involves trudging through the snowy woods with 5 gallon buckets into which the sap is dumped. Once the buckets are full the sap collector (the sap mule) must reverse trudge out of the woods and dump the sap into a storage tank. Some trees produce nearly a gallon of sap per day while others produce fuck all. I think there are 100 tapped trees. I called Marci today and she said they had 300 gallons of sap in the tank! The sap output depends on the age and health of the trees but also on the location of the trees relative to the edge of the woods. This made no sense when Fran said it but I couldn't argue with the facts; the trees deep in the woods were pissing out vast quantities of sap while those on the edge were weeping out only paltry sums of the precious juice. Maybe it is natures attempt to maintain balance with man. If all tress delivered the same amount of sap then there would be no incentive for man to sweat. He would merely have to drive around the edge of the woods and make a journey of a few paces from maple tree to storage tank on back of pickup truck. Nature is smarter than you or I.
Step 7: Boil the sap. This is the end of the line for the weak sugar water that we know as sap. A large outdoor fire is built and a steel pan is set over the fire. The sap is teamed into the pan and boiled. The water content evaporates into the air and the sticky residue, the maple syrup, is emptied into quarter gallon jars. Fran has a 35 gallon boiling pan and from what I have heard it may take 24 hours to boil down all 300 gallons of sap. Two or more shifts of able bodied (but often drunk) adults are needed to manage "the boil". The fire must be kept so hot that the steel pan glows orange. Efficiency is improved by preheating the sap beside the fire so that it does not go to the pan full of ice chunks.
Step 8: Enjoy the fruits of the labor. The maple syrup can now be put on pancakes, used to baste ham, added to stir fry as a natural sweetener or given away as a gift.
I learn something valuable every single time I visit Wisconsin.
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17 March 2008 -
Paddy On The Road
Happy St. Patrick's Day to one and all! I hope you all got to quench your thirst and redden your knuckles today, God knows I did. T'was a fine day to be shure, divil a bit of doubt about it.
Actually, I cut my hand at work on a wire braiding machine so the cause of my wounds is not really that exciting. And while I'm in confession mode I might as well tell you I am not drinking today... because I drank all my beer on Saturday and Sunday. Ah feck it, I may as well keep digging my own grave here... I hate cabbage too, can't look at the crap. I'm the worst excuse for an Irishman, ever.
While leaving a moderately upscale St. Paul coffee shop yesterday evening with Martha and the youngsters I grabbed a copy of the Irish Gazette (). It's not a bad free rag at all and does a decent job of communicating reasonably interesting and relevant snippets of information from the old country. Lest we start making comparisons to the New York Times let me make it clear that this publication is dangerously cheesy, but in an innocent and likable kind of way. My favorite section is "News from Ireland" (), not for the content but for the practically derogatory illustrated character that appears at the top of the page.
I call him Paddy O'Shea. Let's enter Paddy's twisted world.
Paddy's house/hut
Shure, tis no more than a thatch cottage. The thatch looks decent but the lack of chimney, door or window is worrying. I know damn well there is a fireplace in there, so how does he deal with the carbon monoxide issue? Is he so tough that he is immune to toxic fumes? Nobody is that tough. Perhaps there is logic to the absence of door or window and the fumes leave the dwelling via those holes. But if that is the case how does he keep the rain and thieves out? The answer is simple but twofold; he has nothing worth stealing and he doesn't give a shite about the rain, it only makes him stronger (but emotionally weaker). No, that can't be it, doesn't add up. I give up. Like Paddy himself, the house is an enigma covered in pig shite.
Paddy's street
Badly paved road or depressing river of mud? Did the British take the road? I can't tell. Those wavy lines imply some kind of rutted mud track suitable only for ass and cart.
Paddy's attire
The quintessential Irish farmer's multipurpose suit. In that suit this man can bale hay, go to mass, fight, converse on ecumenical matters with the parish priest, down a half barrel of stout, dance like a lunatic, flawlessly impersonate Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (), fix the PTO on a tractor, pick up women, beat women, herd cattle. Wait a second... tailored suit + heroics = James Bond!
Paddy
Standard Irish cap (in the process of being tipped to bid a neighbor/enemy a good day), big hands, twine possibly being used for a belt, full beard, one thick eyebrow, nervous demeanor, shy, legendary tea maker, poet, lover, work machine...
And now back to readin' me paper.
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08 March 2008 -
Meat Sweats
I pinched this text from a wikipedia article. I believe it is highly relevant.
Meat Sweats
A term used to describe a well known malady and byproduct of mass animal protein consumption.
Degrees of severity
Meat sweats are generally categorized on a scale of varying degrees starting at third degree, being a mild meat sweat, to a first degree meat sweat being very severe in nature. Generally, pork and chicken dishes will result in third degree meat sweats, depending on the gross amount consumed, and beef will result in a first degree meat sweat. A first degree meat sweat can result in a temporary debilitating condition causing one to feel symptoms of lethargy, depression and severe apathy. The spiciness of the meat consumed, in a counterintuitive outcome, does not necessarily increase amount of meat sweats that one experiences. This may have to do with the nature of meat sweats, which have a base of lipids rather than perspiration.
Meat Sweat Moans
Upon onset of severe cases of Meat Sweats, a hyper audible moaning or wailing sound has been witnessed by several parties. Although it can not be confirmed, many scholars maintain that this wailing is a direct result of mankind's mammalian instinct - and this moan is an innate trait used to warn off predators during time of mass carnal feeding.
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06 March 2008 -
The Death of Har-Mar
Martha took this shot of the Har-Mar movie theater (part of the Har-Mar mall) in Roseville one evening this week. It could be the last time we see this place. My feelings are mixed, but not 50/50 mixed, I'm leaning more towards displeasure. Yes, I got engaged there, in an old photo booth to be exact, and I'll miss the place but the building is far from beautiful. Ok, it may even be ugly but what will replace it I am sure will be simply disgusting and because of that I am obliged to mourn the loss of a place that actually stood out from the rest of the strip mall crap. The Har-Mar movie theater had class, not a ton of class but just enough class to get by.
Over the course of the last six months a dedicated team of workers have been methodically disassembling the Har-Mar movie theater. I know this because we go to the Har-Mar mall all the time, they have one of the best Barnes & Noble () book shops around, and with each visit we note the progress of the job. Now that I think about it I am confused as to why they are working so carefully. Most destruction jobs are brutal and quick. This one is a very special case, very clinical. First they stripped the light fixtures and all the seating out, then the bathroom fixtures, then the popcorn machines, then they rolled up the carpets, then they brought in a digger and broke up the concrete floors to get down to bare earth. Only when a hollow shell remained did they remove the massive (and incredibly tasteless) cheap glass chandelier.
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02 March 2008 -
Azure
I'm not sure why Martha doesn't care for this Polaroid that she snapped a few months back. I love it. I absolutely love it. It conjures up distant memories of warmer days, back in September of last year, before the snow and ice came down from Canada and cooped us all up indoors, like frozen shit-monkeys. Like you I am also confused as to what a shit-monkey is or why it seemed all too logical to say that. It is what it is.
I miss my () shed. It's off limits for now. Not even the 40,000 BTU propane heater I bought was able to make it a remotely enjoyable place to be. Winter is really grating on me. Another month or so and it will fade thank God. Perhaps in a few years I will be able to insulate the shed enough for it to hold heat.
To hell with this crap...
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13 February 2008 -
iPhone
I'm going to get an iPhone but I'll wait for the 2nd generation model that should be out late 2008. It may be a few dollars cheaper by then and will no doubt be packed with more new features than I know what to do with. The Google Maps feature is what I really need. Anyone who knows me probably has a few stories about how they got in the car with me to go on a simple errand but ended up very, very far from the intended target. Those days will be a thing of the past when my trusty iPhone is at hand. No more trips to the shop, via Nebraska, for me.
To be honest, the only reason I am holding back is that I don't have the money. No, that's not true. I do have the money but I kind of made a deal with Martha that I would have to earn the money I need for it instead of just taking it from our bank account. So if you need your grass cut just give me a call and we can arrange a price. Need the car washed and waxed ()? How about a spit shine on those shoes there sir? Nah, I'm not going to stoop so low that I'm basically panhandling my way to an iPhone. There are legitimate and dignified ways to make dollars and those are the avenues I shall pursue.
On no account does this mean that I will give up my nasty little habit of stealing small change from other peoples cars. Kelley Shea knows what I am talking about. What I finds, I keeps.
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20 January 2008 -
Serious Clara
Clara has always made strange faces. A few days after she was born we noticed that her demeanor was very business like (), hence the temporary nickname "Serious Clara". Now she is starting to do an assortment of suspicious faces. What next, paranoia? She's a funny kid. We'll keep her.
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18 January 2008 -
Cold as ice
Right now, with wind-chill factored in, it is -34°C outside. Sweet mother of divine God! Can you imagine being homeless on a night like this? Earlier this evening I felt sorry for myself when I had to run out to the shed to get my calculator (which took 30 minutes to thaw and work properly). Shame on me.
Both of the kids and Martha have cold like symptoms so I called twice from work today for a snot update. They were all lying low and not daring to venture outdoors. This weather is not funny. It will KILL you before you have time to ask yourself why you thought going outside was such a fantastic idea.
I overheard a conversation this week at work of which myself and a Welsh employee were the subject of a good hearted discussion. Apparently our frequent use of bad language (swear words and the like) is a source of entertainment. It's official, we are as rough as fuck. It is still surprising to me how clean the average American mouth is in the work environment. They'll break, oh yes, they'll break.
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18 December 2007 -
Christmas Clown
Everyone should get one of these () for Christmas.
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06 December 2007 -
Thanksgiving 2007
Thanksgiving 2007 (), Arkansas style. Watch your back Christmas because Thanksgiving looks like it could be my new favorite holiday! What made it special this year was that we celebrated it at our own house. Fran cooked the turkey on the barbeque with his patented basting sauce. The man is a legend. We fired up the woodstove in the back garden and drank as the turkey cooked to perfection.
Meat, beer and fire, what more could a man want?
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01 December 2007 -
Mo Bothán Adhmadóireacht
Example of some cutting boards () I am whipping up for Christmas gifts. The deal is that the recipient will get a decent homemade object that means more to them than some expensive junk I bought at a kitchen shop and in the process of fabricating said gift I will acquire some new woodworking skills, namely laminating dissimilar woods.
I think I might have a go at selling a few next year. I have absolutely nothing to lose.
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29 November 2007 -
Clara Julia Dunne
The new baby and me.
Martha took the () photos while we were still at the hospital.
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28 November 2007 -
New baby!
Clara Julia Dunne was born yesterday at 3:50pm. She weighs 8lbs. She is 20 inches long. She was 11 days late! Labor lasted four hours while the actual pushing lasted less than four minutes. We got a pretty sweet little baby out of the deal and we can't wait to get her home.
During the very early stages of labor I decided to run over to Starbucks to get some tea and a chocolate chip cookie the size of a manhole cover. Abusing the free condiments (ketchup packets, soy sauce packets, sugar cubes, mayo packets) is an all too frequent practice of mine. A petty shoplifter never looses his touch.
The loot this time was about 30 packets of raw brown sugar. The stuff makes all the difference between a good cup of tea and a great cup of tea. At some coffee shops you have to ask specially for it, it's that coveted.
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25 November 2007 -
Crud
Master () for my first and probably my last print using Martha's new Gocco print maker. I think I'll call it "Six Chairs Getting Fucked Across A Room". I intend to print it onto the back of a plain dark grey t-shirt that I have. Martha already got me the correct ink that I'll need to print onto cotton.
Warranty () for Martha's 1958 Remington Travel-Riter typewriter. I guess it no longer counts for much but it does look cool. We got it at a rummage sale this summer. If only I had time to list all the amazing finds I've picked up for nearly nothin' at rummage sales. Set of 60 taps and dies for $8, unused block plane for $3, Ennio Morricone LP for $1...
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18 November 2007 -
No baby yet
New baby is two days late and seems quite happy to continue her stay in Martha's belly. Elise was more than a week late so past history (n=1) indicates that we could be in for the long haul. All this waiting has not been in vain. I have learned two very important new skills related to woodworking.
1. Cutting hardwood end grain, specifically maple, without burning the wood with the saw blade is best accomplished by pushing the wood over the table saw as fast as possible. Of course, the sharpness of the blade is also a major factor but I am very happy to know that I can now cut end grain without having to sand off the burn marks later. This is probably elementary stuff to you more learned woodworkers but I am mostly self taught and learn by trial and error. Every victory is a welcome one that opens up new avenues.
2. The maple I spoke of above was used to make a cutting board () as a Christmas gift for someone. Since food will be prepared on its surface it is very important that the finish be organic or inert so that it will not taint the food. I took a risk on using extra virgin olive oil as a finish. Best move of my life. The wood looks like solid gold and the finish is very flat/satin so there is no evidence of brush strokes.
It's not () just spice racks that get knocked up around here.
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11 November 2007 -
Lake Street, Minneapolis
Martha took these photos on a recent walk down Lake Street in Minneapolis. The neighborhood we explored is mostly made up of Mexican businesses and restaurants. The smell of great food was heavy in the air and made me want to smash my fist through the window of a chicken place and grab one of the chickens that was roasting on a spit. Next time. I walked past a Chinese take-away and observed that the staff were all Hispanic. I'm still trying to work that one out. Was there Chinese people cooking in the back and Hispanic people taking orders up front? Was English the common tongue? It must have been.
I'd love to know another language (aside from my limited prowess in Deutsch and Gaeilge). I think Icelandic would be cool to learn. I often fantasize about living there. Two hours in Reykjavik airport a few years ago is my entire Icelandic experience. Beautiful airport though. Maybe I'll pursue this pipe dream further when the energy crisis hits in about 20 years. The Icelanders are no gobshite's. Geothermal energy will support their economy for many a millennium.
It was a busy weekend here, the best kind of weekend. On Saturday I raked enough leaves to fill 11 large black bags. Might not sound like much but it was nearly three hours pseudo-solid work (stopped twice for a beer, once for tea, once to go and get some free windows that I will build into kitchen cabinets next year) and I still have to do the front garden. Screw it, I'll just go over the leaves with the lawn mower. Martha will never notice. She's thick like that. Each bag is really compressed. I didn't want to try and drag 40 bags to the city compost site. St. Paul recycles its leaves into mulch that is then spread around the city. There is a lot of leaves in this city and they all come off the trees at the same time so serious effort is put into getting them off the street to prevent them from clogging the drains.
Our new baby is due next Friday. I had a dream/vision about her the other night and was able to see what she looks like. I wonder if it will be true.
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02 November 2007 -
Part time connoisseur
I don't go to pubs much anymore, maybe five times per year and I am quite happy with that. Family, work (love me new job () by the way), shed, sleep is where it's at for this man, in those respective orders of priority. Our new baby is due two weeks from today. I can't wait to hold her and see what she looks like. We think she'll have dark hair but we don't know why we think that.
I do enjoy a six pack every weekend though, or sextet of ale as Homer once said. For whatever reason, I rarely pick the same beer two or more weeks in a row. One week it'll be Becks and next week it'll be Heineken, then Pilsner Urquell, then Stella Artois, then Point Special, then Amstel Light, then Linenkugels Honeyweiss... Yes, all those beers fall into the same category of lager and are best served very cold but I think there is a connection between mood and choice of beer. I can't put my finger on it but there is a reason I choose one over the other even though the argument could be made that “they all taste the same.” Philistines.
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10 October 2007 -
Tomato Paella
Why is it that any time I fantasize about making this probably very simple dish I just end up on the couch eating dry crackers in my underwear?
3 cups water
2 cups short grain rice
1 1/2 lb ripe tomatoes, cored and cut into thick wedges
1 medium onion, minced
1 tablespoon garlic, minced
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon Spanish pimentón
1/2 cup white wine
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Large pinch saffron threads
Minced parsley and basil for garnish
1. Preheat oven to 450F. Warm water in a saucepan. Put tomatoes in a medium bowl, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and drizzle them with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Toss to coat.
2. Put remaining oil in a 10" or 12" oven proof skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables soften, 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in tomato paste, saffron if you are using it, and paprika and cook for a minute more. Add rice and cook, stirring occasionally, until it is shiny, another minute or two. Add wine and let simmer until it is mostly absorbed, then add the hot water and stir until just combined.
3. Put tomato wedges on top of rice and drizzle with juices that accumulated in bottom of bowl. Put pan in oven and roast, undisturbed, for 15 minutes. Check to see if rice is dry and just tender. If not, return pan to oven for another 5 to 10 minutes. If rice looks too dry but still is not quite done, add a small amount of stock or water (or wine). When rice is ready, turn off oven and let pan sit for 5 to 15 minutes.
4. Remove pan from oven and sprinkle with parsley and basil. If you like, put pan over high heat for a few minutes to develop a bit of a bottom crust before serving.
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21 September 2007 -
Death Ball 3000
Summer is over and I am pretty dang happy about that to be honest. I heard a weather dick on the radio (you know who you are… Mark Sealy of Minnesota Public Radio) say we experienced 30 days above 90ºF this summer. I doubt 30 days is a record but it sure was rough and according to the climatologists it's not going to get any better until the next ice age. Thank God for cold beer, ice cream, the garden hose, drinks with little fucking umbrellas in them and the best respite of all, Elise's ankle deep swimming pool. I would also be praising the Lord for air conditioning but we don't have it, nor do we plan to get it. If we were unfortunate or mental enough to live in the desert or in the Deep South it would be a necessity but 30 hot days out of 365 is manageable and makes those cool days all the sweeter. Martha has been preaching that line for the three summers I've lived here and I was finally won over this year. Also, our house was built in 1889 and for sure doesn't have insulation efficient or fancy enough to make AC viable. Legend has it that insulation back then consisted of newspaper and straw. Yes sir, I'll take straw and newspaper over your new fangled R30 polystyrene foam any old day of the week.
Elise has a new boyfriend, goes by the name of Tim, or Young Tim. He's definitely marriage material. It doesn't take an idiot to figure this one out. His dad is German and his mother is Russian or possibly Soviet Block. I can't distinguish certain eastern European languages from each other, one of my many failings. Suffice to say that growing up in a multilingual house will guarantee Tim a place in a good college, maybe even one that has ivy growing all over it and is considered in the same league as other establishments with generous ivy coverage, an Ivy League college if you will. He needs to work on his chivalry though and they don't teach that at Harvard, Yale, Princeton or even at Ripon. Tim may only be 14 months old but there is no excuse for the disrespect he showed Elise last night at the park, no excuse. It was a basketball that drove a wedge through their budding friendship, a basketball.
About 20 minutes prior to the incident I found a basketball that some kid must have left at the park. Knowing that Elise likes to play with a ball now and again I entertained her with some dribbling and hoop shooting, Larry Bird style. She got most pleasure out of me simply lobbing the ball in her direction so that it bounced toward her at her eye level. We threw the ball back and forth to each other for a while. Martha, who is 31 weeks pregnant, joined in the game and demonstrated a level of sport know-how equally pathetic to mine. Soon all three of us were laughing and chasing the ball around the court. Having a family is the greatest thing in the world. Why the hell are more people my age not having kids? Every time we go to the park with Elise we meet parents of other young kids but the parents are always 10 or more years older than us. We have nothing in common. It stinks. Whatever.
Elise started to yawn meaning it was time to go home and put her to bed. We hadn't decided yet whether we'd keep the free ball or not so we continued to play with it as we walked toward the car. Walking through the playground I thought I'd show Elise one last trick. I rolled the ball up the twisty slide and let it fly down the slide on its own. She laughed and the ball rolled over to where Tim, his sister and his mother were playing. Tim picked up the ball and started to play with it, thinking it had no owner and had just decided to roll down the slide on its own. Elise ran over and took it back from him. He got mad and took it back from her… and she cried. Tim's sister, being about three years old and understanding the concept of sharing, played the peace broker. She took the ball from Tim and rolled it to Elise. She made her own brother see that there was more fun to be had from everyone playing with the ball than from him having it to himself and trying to defend it from our crying daughter. Elise's tears evaporated as she got into the game. She rolled the ball to Tim's sister. She rolled it to Tim. Tim rolled it to Elise. Elise rolled it to Tim… you get the picture. It was very interesting to witness the situation unfold, to watch a dispute erupt and then see three little people find a solution, by themselves, that gave everyone what they wanted. Idiots at the UN take note.
Our family is set to grow by one new member on November 16th, give or take a few days. Elise was over a week late. We already know that the new baby is a girl. If this happens again Martha might have to get the Henry VIII treatment. Tough but fair.
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11 September 2007 -
New job
I got a new job. Process Development Engineer at AGA Medical (). The focus will be on developing Nitinol wire braiding processes to support new and existing products. Boring to you perhaps, fascinating to me.
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02 September 2007 -
Books, books, books...
I came across this () funny photo the other day. On the morning of Elise's first birthday we thought she'd enjoy the surprise of coming downstairs to a sea of balloons. Not so, she chose to read a little book instead, being the huge bookworm that she is. Here is another case of chronic book reading syndrome (), this time in a dirty but seriously cool Puerto Rico hotel.
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07 July 2007 -
Meat diaries
The ultrasound revealed that the next baby will be a girl. A sister for Elise. I got the doctor to double check because there was a moment when I thought I saw something that resembled a wee tool but alas, I was wrong. Not to worry, plenty of time to produce a male heir.
Martha and Elise have gone to Waupaca for the weekend. I've been left at home and am trying hard to stay out of trouble. It's not easy. It may sound cruel but it is a little bit nice to have the house to myself. I'm always glad I have this () handy reference for times when I am alone. It's gotten me out of and into many a hairy situation. If you happen to pick up a copy you should go straight to the section on how to cook “Spaghetti Bolognese Divorce Style.” Priceless.
I entertained last night in the form of a casual get together. That's right, I hosted a party. Kelley and her gentleman friend, Dean, came over. Earlier that day I took the steaks out of the freezer and chopped up some vegetables. These steaks were a birthday gift from Martha's grandparents to me. Rosie bought them off the Internet and they came by FedEx packed in dry ice! Now that's what I call the perfect in-laws. I cooked the steaks on the barbeque. I'm not well known for my cooking skills but I will let you in on one secret to the art of cooking steak over charcoal. One should constantly brush the meat with water. It prevents the steak from getting dry or burning. Keep that under your hat for God's sake.
The culinary magic didn't stop there. Fuck no. Not long after the meat was cooking nicely the host came out with a bowl of vegetables that had marinated for hours in a ginger mandarin sauce. These vegetables were then skewered with wooden chop sticks that the host sharpened on a belt sander and soaked in water for a few hours. Again, water played a key role in the cooking. Soaking the wooden chop sticks means that they don't burn when the vegetable skewers are thrown onto the barbeque. “The man is a God damn genius,” I heard one of the guests whisper, or maybe the wind rustled the leaves on the oak tree making me think I heard something to that effect. It's happened before. The dozen beers I drank may have also had some influence. I doubt it though.
Much earlier in the day Martha sent me a text from Wisconsin. “Make sure everyone goes in the photo booth tonight.” We own a Polaroid photo booth and it is a rule that all visitors must have their mug shot taken in the booth. So, after we were done eating we followed the wife's orders and posed for the camera (). The film expired in 2002, hence the quality issues but they don't make it anymore so this is as good as it gets. The experience is more important than the outcome. How many people can say they got drunk, ate perfectly cooked steak and then had their picture taken in the personal photo booth of a friend of their's?
There are many more stories to tell but it's hot right now (97°F/36°C) and I need to go cool off.
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15 June 2007 -
Paradise
Let the sand castle building, drinking beer from a coconut, grass skirt wearing antics begin! On Sunday we head to Tortola, British Virgin Islands, for the wedding of Martha's step brother Noah to his long time lady friend Tegan. I guess that makes him my step brother in law and her my step sister in law through marriage.
I've never been to the Caribbean so my only frame of reference on life in paradise is what I've seen in movies. I expect to befriend monkeys, eat a lot of fruit, talk with parrots, not wear a watch because according to TV ads for Bacardi nobody has jobs down there and nobody cares what time it is because when you've got nothing to do you've got nowhere to be. I'll most likely also swim in turquoise colored waters, light fires on the beach, get tangled up in some romantic misunderstandings... It's all good in the 'hood.
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04 June 2007 -
Bookcase made from "shite"
Not finished yet. Still have to put glass in the doors, polish the steel on the sides, make a top, rub mineral oil into the top, doors and sides. I made this bookcase from wood I found all over the city. There are some maple floor boards with the tongue and groove cut off, some cherry skirting boards glued together to make 3/4" boards, steel sheet pulled out of a recycling dumpster at a local factory, glass pulled out of a dumpster behind a window and door factory...
Hopefully I can sell her for $300 this summer at the Waupaca Arts Fair. I aim to have a few more bookcases made by then. This one is the biggest I'll do for now. 50" tall and 30" wide. The doors for this one I made myself but the next ones will have doors I found around the city. It's amazing what people throw away and what I can turn into cash for the family.
Better get back to the shed, me cup of tea is going cold.
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20 May 2007 -
Farming in St. Paul
Have I told you about our community garden plot? Basically, Martha wants to grow vegetables but our back garden is too shaded because of the shed and the big oak tree beside the shed, neither of which is going anywhere. In addition to this we will be tearing up the back garden in the course of the construction project we are going forward with this summer. Therefore if we want to farm we need to farm somewhere else. Hence the plot we now own for the next 12 months. It's 12ft x 15ft and is about half a mile from our house. It is one of about 50 plots all fenced in together to keep out rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, deer, bears, sharks, snakes... It's boarded on one side by the street and on the other by the railroad. I'd say the total size of the community garden is no more than an acre or so. I'm new to agriculture so I am probably off by a few fractions of an acre. It's a highly productive thin sliver of land in the middle of the city. If you live in Europe then this concept is the exact same as owning an allotment. In Europe I believe that people who live in homes with no gardens would be your typical allotment owners.
It's nice to have control over the price of our food. Nothing worse than being subjected to price hikes on stuff like red bell peppers due to poor crop yields in California. It is also nice to know where our food comes from and to eat it with pride knowing that "I grew this from a feckin' seed." The point of this story is to tell you that I actually enjoy turning over soil with a shovel, building a chicken wire fence around the perimeter, being part of something that involves patience and careful attention to detail. I'm an urban farmer!
Now let's get to the youngest urban farmer of them all, Elise. We brought her down to the plot on Monday evening after I got home from work. I worked on the fence while Martha turned the soil and got it ready for planting. Sitting close to us in the muck was Elise absolutely lost in thought and completely content to dig at the soil with a rock. It was like watching a kid play with Lego. I've never see her that focused on anything. Pretty soon I had the fence up and without provocation or suggestion she began to pull stones out of the soil, stumble to the fence and drop the stones on the other side of it. She continued this for a few more minutes but then discovered that muck didn't taste too bad so she ate a few handfuls. We put a stop to that pretty quick. From time to time she would rub her face with the palms of her hands which were filthy. It wasn't long before she looked like she'd been down a coal mine.
We went back to the plot again last night. Martha planted about a dozen tomato plants. I finished the fence. Elise worked on the muck with her new shovel (a tea spoon) which understandably led to confusion as she began to spoon the muck into her mouth. I quickly replaced the spoon with a garden trowel which is half her size! She dug away with that for a while and continued the important work of stone removal. We'll go back tonight to plant some more stuff.
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07 May 2007 -
Conky!
"Ohhhhh... myyyyyyy Julian....... my handsome Julian Patrick Swayze you were so fucking sexy in Roadhouse and fucking Dirty Dancing."
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01 May 2007 -
The swing
She stands on the little stool in the back porch and yells out the window at her swing. It doesn’t matter if it is raining, snowing or pitch dark outside, that’s where she wants to be. It provides never-ending joy.
I pick her up and drop her into the swing seat. I push her back and forth for a few minutes. She enjoys it and wants to be pushed higher. I oblige but my safety limit doesn’t match up with hers. There is no such thing as danger to her. Be it object, animal or person, everyone is her best friend; from friendly strangers in restaurants right down to the homeless people invisible to the majority of us. King or street sweeper, they all get a frantic wave and smile. It’s reciprocated with equal enthusiasm, most of the time. Some put up a cold front, refusing to be humored by the little red head that has so much love for everything that it has to be shared or she’ll burst. We see it all the time at home too. Martha and I have only so much capacity. We soon fill up with what she is dishing out in spades. The excess is spread out around the house in the form of adoring hugs and kisses lavished upon chairs, the coffee table, the floor, radiators…
We hung the swing from the smaller of the two catalpa trees in our back garden. It swings a little to the left and has been known to get dangerously close to the trunk. A shoddy installation job not helped by the sloping branch it is anchored to. There was a more suitable branch on the other side of the tree but we lack a ladder of sufficient height to get up there. She won’t hold it against me. When swinging seems to be getting old we switch to slowly turning the swing clockwise so that the ropes are braided tight together. The anticipation builds. The giggles leak out and break the nervous silence. She knows what’s coming. A few more twists and there is enough stored energy in the ropes. The swing itself has lifted up about 18” like the seat in a photo booth. I let go. The swing unwinds and with each rotation it accelerates more, as do the squeals and laughter. It’s all over in less than a minute. She is laying back in the swing, unable to sit up, paralyzed by bliss and dizziness. We go again. We do it maybe five times total. Then she pukes, but it’s only water because dinner was ages ago… so we go again.
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15 April 2007 -
Furry little fellas with beady eyes
I've posted many times before on my love of scavenging used building materials, furniture and other random junk () from the streets of the city. There are many driving factors behind my motivations. There is the reuse/recycle/repurpose element. There is the money saving element. There is the desire to be the opposite of every dick who lines the pockets of Home Depot with their hard earned dollars every time they need a few planks to do some job around the house. I can tell you a dozen places where there is an infinite free supply of planks and getting them will not involve having to deal with the over enthusiastic store greeter two seconds after walking through the front door of the store. I gave up on feeling I have to be nice to those people years ago. I'm still convinced that the role of the store greeter is totally pointless in a similar vein to the old men in Dublin who are paid to sit on a chair in the middle of Grafton Street holding signs for local businesses between their legs. Couldn't a bucket filled with concrete with a hole for the sign do an equally proficient job? Maybe I'm being cruel because the sign holders differ from the greeters in that they don't give a shit about how you are doing today or whether you need to know all about the "patio furniture on sale in the garden section to the rear of the store."
I've finally realized that the main reason I do it is the surprise factor. I never know what I will come across in the course of my rummaging. A few blocks from our house a local church is being renovated. Outside is a big dumpster into which the contents of the building are being tossed. I took a look inside the dumpster not really looking for anything in particular. I found a great little safe with the door missing! What I will do with this I'll never know but the excitement of the score is what it's all about.
This evening my career was nearly cut short. I was out looking for some plywood in dumpsters around Minneapolis. I came across one that was packed full of wood. As I began to climb in a giant crow flew out. I suspect he was digging for food as there were a few rubbish bags among the wood. The evidence of food waste and avian scavengers should have been my hint to let this one go but my senses were jarred by the bounty before me. I swung my leg over the edge of the dumpster and was about to jump in when a rat the size of a dog came out from under some crap. I got the hell out of there as if a swarm of wasps were after me. The size of the hospital bill for fixing a dose of rabies scares me to death when I think back to the $800 I had to hand over for two stitches needed to address an apple peeling injury. I didn't learn from that incident either because I still peel the skin off apples.
Seems like some ground rules have established themselves. If there is food in a dumpster then the rats own the food but they also own everything else in that dumpster. I can respect that.
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12 April 2007 -
Crippling Balloon Payment
Recent financial analysis (with spreadsheet of course) for the Dunne family made me think of a classic Simpsons moment.
Canyonero Salesman - "Ok, heres how your lease breaks down... this is your down payment, then here's your monthly, annnnnnnnnd there's your weekly."
Homer - "And that's it, right?"
Canyonero Salesman - "Yup... oh, then after your final monthly payment there's the routine CBP, or (mutters almost inaudibly) Crippling Balloon Payment."
Homer - "But that's not for a while, right?"
Canyonero Salesman - "Right!"
Homer - "Sweet!"
Life moves fast around these parts. Financial goals for fiscal year 2007 are pretty basic: double our mortgage to pay for 750sq.ft addition to house, clear loan on our Honda Civic Hybrid, buy new Honda Fit (for Martha, Elise and Seamus). The ultimate but probably impossible goal is to buy the new car outright and have no loan on it... We'll see what happens.
Casual meeting with architect () went well this evening. Elise charmed them good.
Time for bed. Exhausted.
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09 April 2007 -
Winter blues
Would you believe that we are expecting more feckin' snow this week? This winter business is literally breaking my heart. It's been going on since November for Christ sake. I don't ask for much, that's not true, I ask for too much but some non coat and hat weather for the first time in six months isn't too greedy.
Anyway, enough griping out of me. I don't control the weather... yet.
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30 March 2007 -
Home improvements
I'm eating chocolate covered raisins by the handful. They're not good for me. I don't care. I can't get fat for some reason and I suppose that's a good thing. Maybe not. I'm drinking Heineken. I'm listening to God Speed You Black Emperor. I've just finished my first week of my new job at Boston Scientific.
I'm thinking about our new baby that will be born in November. Martha jokes about it being a boy even though it will probably be a girl. She calls him Seamus and says that he'll be lighting fires, breaking windows and kicking people by the time he can walk. We all have dreams.
We had a partner from Minneapolis based Shelter Architecture () over this evening to give us some early stage design advice on bringing our 19th century house into the 21st century. Our house was built in 1889 and is solid as a rock but only has two bedrooms and I can't see Elise sharing a bedroom with Seamus. They'd kill each other for sure. We need another 500sq.ft pretty quick.
So the plan is to add two new bedrooms upstairs, put in a bathroom with shower downstairs, extend the kitchen, move the back porch out about 10ft, heat the addition by passive solar energy and overhaul the upstairs bathroom which is Martha's biggest wish. It's one ugly feckin' bathroom right now and she wants to do a tile mosaic. And yes, believe it or not, Polaroid photography can be transferred onto ceramic tiles that are then glazed and fired.
I'm minding Elise on my own tomorrow for a few hours so I better go and get some sleep. Playing “bus,” “octopus hat,” “cups,” “the bear is gonna getcha” is more tiring than you'd believe. It's also more gratifying than a cup of tea with your granny's fresh brown bread covered in butter, if that's possible.
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21 March 2007 -
My shed
It might not look like much () but it's my favorite place to go and forget about everything for a while. Plug the iPod into the stereo for music, drink scalding hot tea, pound a few nails into something, debate where I'll put the lathe, sweep the floor in a half ass fashion, consider but never go through with taking up smoking again because sometimes the moment just feels perfect for puffing, eat Jaffa Cakes, sit, relax and just shut the fuck up for an hour or two.
Martha took the shed photo with her Polaroid 340 Land Camera which is similar to the one you see above.
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25 February 2007 -
Projects
Recent adventures ((), (), ()) describe a continuing interest in our built surroundings.
Other active projects include building furniture from discarded materials found in the city. It's insane what we throw away. Cross section of an oak board () once part of a pallet but currently waiting in my shed for reincarnation. Note the medullary rays.
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09 February 2007 -
Death of an octet of ale
I made a 1:40 scale model of our house () and then sprayed it red, red as the fires of hell. I didn't attach the front porch that wraps around the north and east sides of the ground floor () but I might get to it if the cold weather ever relents. Like I mentioned before, it's hard work trying to mess around in the shed when the mercury reads -20°C or worse.
On that same note, a cruel fate was served me last night. I left my case of Point Special beer in the front porch but due to the cold temperatures some of the beers froze, expanded and eight good bottles popped their caps. A tragedy of Titanic proportions you will understand. Eight good men lost... and for what? It's times like these I thank God for the family and friends that surround me.
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03 February 2007 -
Crazy stairs
I want to cut windows in some of the steps in our staircase. Underneath each window will be a little wooden box which will contain junk/photos/weird stuff. The box will be covered with glass.
Martha won't let me do this to our house though. She suggested I do it to the staircase I built in my two story shed. Yeah, right.
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28 January 2007 -
Furniture from what we waste
AutoCAD & Photoshop () used to produce design for cabinet to be made from salvaged materials. Dimensions are 45"h x 30"w x 10"d. I'm thinking maple, harvested from a pallet, for the door frames and either frosted/opaque glass or rusted 1/8" steel plate for the door panels. I'd have to buy the glass but everything else the city has given to me. The city feeds me when I am hungry for materials. I try to save the city from choking on what we discard.
It's way too cold to go out to my shed and work on it though. Today's low was -23°C. No amount of tea and not even five layers of underwear can keep a man warm for long in those conditions. Wait for a better day.
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14 January 2007 -
Reflow
I have this idea for starting a consulting business. It's not a crazy idea. A much needed service would be provided to both young and established medical device companies that struggle with melt processing (reflow) of catheters. There are many ways to cook a catheter but there is only way that materials science will allow and it is knowledge deficiency in this key area that kills many catheter projects and companies too.
Anyway, there's a snow storm happening right now so I'm going to stand in the back garden, drink a beer and enjoy the peace that comes with snowfall.
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12 January 2007 -
10p bag
Always playing (), current floor plan () of our house but hopefully changing sometime this year, the industrial midwest skyline () of the early 1900's, improvements in my self taught cabinet making () skills.
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07 January 2007 -
Beer served at 34°F
The perfect beer temperature for maximum satisfaction is 34°F, not 40°F - 45°F like they say on the back of the bottle, idiots. That 10°F difference is enough to warrant the bold statement that “swallowing beer served at the recommended temperature is akin to drinking lukewarm piss”, which I’ll say (without proof) is worse than drinking warm piss.
I know this because I keep my beer on the back porch and 34°F is what the air temperature read when I drank a few the other night. If I was to drink a glass of water at that temperature surely my teeth would ache like hell but the icy beer slid past my teeth without protest from them and ended up deep in my guts leaving a beautiful tingling sensation all the way down to my toes. It was how I imagine feeling after drinking a mug of liquid nitrogen, and surviving. I felt cleansed with the added bonus of inching closer to that state that exists before actual drunkenness, a buzz I believe the young kidz call it. I rarely cross the line these days, too busy with my young family, too guilty to invest time in a hangover when that precious time could be spent much more wisely on shed related projects and too disinterested in being a messy asshole capable of nothing but sleep, loudness and accidental destruction of others belongings. It’s better to have your fun, be nice, be coherent, go to bed on a high and wake up the next day fresh in my opinion. Like cashing in your winnings at the casino instead of spinning the wheel one last time then kicking yourself for not getting out on a high. They call it a win-win situation and I’m living well by this method.
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16 December 2006 -
Brat face
Toughest kid in St. Paul (). No doubt about it.
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27 November 2006 -
Little drinker
A drunk leprechaun, the worst kind. I love this kid by the way.
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11 November 2006 -
Kerb Score Queen
Insanity has finally infiltrated the Dunne household. Never saw that coming. As most people know Martha is obsessed with Polaroid photography, and I mean crack cocaine style obsessed. She's had a few shows (), sold some work, built a reputation, found her niche/calling/reason to live. Sometimes I dream about how far this could go and I think this stuff could be paying the bills in 20 years time.
The purpose of this post is to announce that today Martha became the proud owner of a free Polaroid photo booth. A what? Yes, that icon of 20th century photo technology that can be found in any self respecting mall/shopping center. We've all used it at one time or another, to have passport photos taken or to pose for cheesy romantic snapshots with our partners. Good times.
She scored the photo booth on a local website that people use to give away stuff they don't want. Idiots.
This photo booth now sits in our porch because it is too wide to bring into the living room, it's future home. Well need to take the bastard apart, haul inside and then put together again, Humpty Dumpty style, in the corner of the room where most normal people would have a television but we don't have a television because we are obviously not like most normal people.
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29 October 2006 -
Nearly winter
I'm burdened with the sense that this website, once so pivotal to me, is loosing steam, has sprung a leak, has had its tires shot out. Not true. It still serves as an input for my dreams of triumph over mediocrity and an output for a characteristically morbid desire to leave something behind so that I make a mark, however faint. My energies are invested elsewhere these days ().
The rewards are instant and more fun than a sack of giddy drunk squirrels let loose in your living room. If somebody had of told me, less than 12 months ago, that I would be happier spending my Saturday night pulling a baby around the house in a cardboard box with the belt from a dressing gown than splurging my money getting drunk in a dingy south Minneapolis bar I would have proclaimed “Sir, you are a damn liar.” And that's all there is to the matter. Past notions of a good time have yielded all meaning.
We are on the tipping point of winter. Worthless amounts of snow, almost insulting quantities, covered the car two mornings during the work week. So trivial was the snow thickness and consistency that I bothered not brushing it off the car but instead let it blow off by itself once I was in motion. True validation of joke snow.
Our big oak trees lost their leaves weeks ago but the young oak, but a pup, clings to its foliage now rendered a clay red color. A joy to stand under, alone and lost in positive thought, on a cold blue sky day with a cup of tea in hand. I must check on the young elm that grows too close to our foundation. It poses no threat now but in years to come as its subterranean girth increases it may infiltrate the basement or worse, cause damage to the house. I'll consult my step-father-in-law for advice on moving the elm to safer ground. He'll know, he always does. Our catalpa trees tower over the house. We don't yet understand how, when or if their dried up leaves will fall to earth. Further study is required.
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19 October 2006 -
Smell memory
Cold evening. Leaves cover the ground. Mind free of thought. Darkness comes early and with it silence. Lit a match. Instant flashback to Halloween time long ago in Ireland. Smell memory.
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09 October 2006 -
Scraps
Elise ((), ()).
Recent and deep moments of reverence ((), ()).
Failure on the prairie ().
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07 October 2006 -
The use of English
"Flatter than piss on a plate."
Ron Reynolds
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17 September 2006 -
Martha's next show
Instant Gratification ()
Polaroid photography of Martha Duerr
October 2006
Chez Marche Cafe
Main Street, Waupaca, WI 54981
Martha Duerr is a Waupaca, Wisconsin native now living in the Twin Cities where she attended the University of Minnesota, graduating in the Spring of 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Arts. After a two and a half year stint as a preschool teacher at Fraser School, an inclusive school where children with special needs and children with typical needs learn together in the same classrooms, she embarked upon her current adventure of raising her own daughter. Elise is now six months old and is her mom's model, accomplice, and assistant as she makes art in the backyard and travels the city taking pictures. Martha's current work reflects her love of instant results along with her total rejection of technology. As the world of photography moves forward into the digital age, it only makes sense that Martha would make a contrary motion into the vast world of obscure, increasingly expensive and hard to find films and cameras. This show (Instant Gratification, Chez Marche Cafe, October 3rd to 23rd) showcases one such relic of the photographic past, the Polaroid.
“Polaroid is the new digital.” says Duerr. “No other photo medium so effectively captures slices of life in such a permanent, compact, beautiful way. The image cannot be reproduced in its original form, and neither can the moment it contains. The square framing of my work is meant to accentuate the square image and the photos are mounted directly on the board so as to retain the unique look of the Polaroid complete with its signature white border.”
Instant Gratification will be at the Chez Marche beginning October 3rd and the artist will be present at an opening reception on Saturday October 7th from 3pm to 5pm.
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15 September 2006 -
Roadkill
I saw a styrofoam cup tumble out of the back of a rubbish truck today. I was driving behind the speeding vehicle. The cup bounced a few times before meeting a brutal death at the front wheel of the car behind me. I saw everything through my rear view mirror. The cup never stood a chance.
A few months back a I saw a suitcase fly out from the back of a pickup truck on the opposite side of the freeway. A side wind or poor packing broke the case free and she took flight. The suitcase hit the ground, burst open and the clothing within scattered itself across three lanes of westbound Interstate 94. Other motorists swerved to avoid lethal trousers and hairdryers that hurled themselves under the wheels of any car in their path. The owner of the suitcase and his passenger looked out their window as their lost belongings danced on the asphalt. They slowed to maybe 60mph and continued to glance back, probably contemplating whether to pull over and try to gather up the items, but that would be suicide. They wouldn't have stood a chance.
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11 September 2006 -
Free stuff
If I want free steel, and I do, I drive to the Ratner Steel plant on Hwy 280 in St. Paul. It's about 3 miles from our house. They have a recycling dumpster full of huge sheets of mild carbon steel. If I could lift them and find a use for them I would.
If I want free bricks, and I do, I drive to any of the loft developments in the twin cities area. Old brick warehouse buildings are being converted into modern and surprisingly not too expensive living spaces. During the transformation from storage facilities to beautiful loft apartments the buildings are punched full of holes so windows can be installed. Those orphaned bricks, each so unique, will be used to build an outdoor fireplace in our garden.
If I want free wood, and I do, I have multiple places I can visit and be sure to leave with bucket loads of ¾” plywood, oak and pine two by fours or old maple tongue and groove flooring. I never steal, only take what has been thrown away by others. I save. I reclaim. Half the thrill of the score is getting out into the city, treading where many wouldn't, reliving boyhood adventures and generally enjoying the sweetness of a deal. It's not about the money though. I don't know what it's about, yet.
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08 September 2006 -
Scanner
The Dunne’s finally bought a scanner. Martha is more of a film photographer than digital photographer so it was an inevitable but long overdue purchase for the young family. I’ve spent the last few days scanning everything ((), (), (), (), (), ()) but the kitchen sink and my arse.
I even shelled out for the two year $10 warranty out of fear that the machine would implode mere months into its life at our house. Electronics have a nasty habit for breaking promises of longevity and loyal service. My iPod rolled over and died after only six months. I know it can be fixed but sometimes I just feel like putting it in a vise and ending the pain. Now it waits in purgatory until a time I see fit to take it to the Apple store at the mall. It’s having a good think about what it did.
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30 August 2006 -
On a wall in St.Paul
"The world is so cold. Graffiti keeps me warm. Because it is my blanket."
Anonymous graffiti in St.Paul
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26 August 2006 -
Bruce Lee
In Ireland of the late 1980's, when I was a young and impressionable lad, I was one quarter shareholder in a four man band of thieves/tree climbers/arsonists/vandals/highwaymen. We were driven neither by malice, malevolence or disillusionment with society. We lived for each minute, traveling the length and breadth of our respective neighborhoods by bike and foot; exploring wooded and abandoned places that are now long gone, victims of urban development. We fueled ourselves on sweets bought with stolen money. Mr. Kane never failed to provide for his fellow hooligans. His generosity knew no limits. A strict sugar diet of cola bottles, jaw breakers, 10p bags, cool pops, macaroon bars, fizzlers and white chocolate mice kept us focused, efficient and wild. It’s hard to write this without yearning for real writing skills that would transport all who read this back to those times. But maybe not even Shakespeare could accurately convey what it really felt like to be a young Dublin boy with no aspirations for greatness or regret for failures past. The freedoms we enjoyed will never be had again but we used up every ounce of them when they were ours. We wasted nothing.
The icon you see above is from the Commodore 64 game Bruce Lee. We finished the game together, the only computer game I’ve ever been able to complete. We shared all our ideas, strategies and tricks to achieve a common goal of beating all 20 levels so that Bruce Lee could revel in every bit of the glory that his 8Bit ass deserved. We played for hours on end. It never got boring. We scribbled diagrams on the back of the RTE Guide to explain our plans to each other. When the team bought in on the theory we’d unpause the game and the fury would continue.
I’ve downloaded an emulated version of Bruce Lee for the PC. It’s not the same. My mind is too clogged with work problems involving optimal melt processing of thermoplastic elastomers and the day to day demands and joys of a family man. Focus eludes me.
It’s now Elise’s turn to have absolutely nothing to worry about. Lucky girl ().
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06 August 2006 -
Nature girl
I'm moving toward putting bigger photos on the website. I'm sure most people have 17" monitors these days, even on their laptops so what the hell. Exhibit A: Elise () in the back garden.
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09 July 2006 -
Digital haircut
I got my hair cut today. It had been about two months since my last shearing and so I was now sporting lateral tufts like Krusty the clown and quickly becoming the source of inter-company jokes, probably. An ex-colleague of mine shared some inner circle information on hair etiquette. To effect an image of professionalism one should get their hair cut very frequently (we're talking every three weeks tops). The idea is that a gentleman should always strive to maintain a consistent façade when dealing with business peers. Clients and contemporaries should not be able to detect if your hair actually grows or not and when you do get it cut you basically walk out the door of the barber looking the same as you did when you walked in.
Bollox to that. I am on a strict quin-annual regiment. People know when I come in to work with a new hair cut. Ronald McDonald disappears and a shaved Mr. Dunne digs in for another 10 week afro.
I went to Great Clips today. It's a chain hairdresser. You'll find it in any or every strip mall housing the usual suspects (Starbucks, McDonalds, Leann Chin, Caribou Coffee, Subway, Dress Barn, Home Depot, Target, Best Buy, Rainbow...). It was a Sunday and my usual barber, Pete Lebak, was closed. My afro was at critical mass and I simply couldn't wait until the following Saturday to have the Canadian fix me proper. I had to cave and cave I did. How I will ever explain my disloyalty to Pete I can't say. I'm in for quite the beating.
I walked in the door of Great Clips to what looked like the set of an early 1990's Australian soap opera. One of the stylists who was busy mulletizing a customer approaches the counter, says hello and then asks for my phone number. This regularly happens when I buy something with credit card. The intent of the question is to achieve one of two possible goals:
1. Validate that the given number matches the card holder’s number that the sales assistant is looking at on the screen therefore confirming that I am truly the card owner and have not mugged it from some poor sap. It's a weak method of identity theft prevention in my opinion.
2. Use my number in automated verbal junk mail initiatives that the corporation believes will entice me to spend money at one of their conveniently located establishments. Those tricks never work on a man as sharp as me. As soon as I hear that robot voice it's all over. Sometimes I swear at the machine. It feels no pain. It can’t cry.
Since I had yet to get actually get my $14 hair cut the lady obviously wasn't interested in credit card theft and so Sherlock Holmes here had to assume that late night or early morning solicitation calls were on the menu. I explained that I'd rather not hand over my number as I really hated those phone calls. We don't do that she explains. Turns out that Great Clips intended to use my number to build me a customer profile which records the style of my haircut on each visit so that if I go back a few weeks (or months in my case) later all they have do is punch in my phone number and up pops an entire history of all the haircuts I've ever gotten at Great Clips. I then choose a style from my data base and the job gets done. My phone number is my ID is my key to a digital haircut. Stupid, excessive, efficient, ingenious, American.
I’m going back to the guy who smokes and swears as he rips my hair out with a blunt as hell scissors and gives me no change from whatever fistful of bills I offer him. There are no price lists at Pete Lebak Barber Stylist, there are no manners, his sedentary cancer surviving golden Labrador stinks the place up and in a drawer Pete keeps a photo of the 5lb tumor they pulled out of him a few months back, the dirty magazines are piled high for the elderly customers to read, he tells stories that belong in best selling non-fiction books, he's friends with everyone who thinks like him and those who don't, well... he owns a lot of guns, he's been all over the world, he'll set your heart burning with desire to explore places out west that nobody goes to. He has no computerized systems that guarantee the haircut you get will exactly replicate the one you got last time. No, you get what you get. If he's in a warm mood you'll get a great haircut and leave with stories you wish were tales that narrated your life. If he's hung-over and in a foul mood because he slipped on an icy step and broke three ribs you'll get a shit haircut... That's life.
But the experience will be real, you'll leave no data behind.
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27 June 2006 -
Lofts, St. Paul
We moved house this month. We didn't move far, less than one mile but in doing so we crossed over Hwy 280 which marks the Minneapolis/St.Paul border. Confused? We've migrated to a new city but barely broke a sweat in the process. Nice.
St. Paul has a reputation for being boring, too quiet, desolate, pointless... All of these accusations are true but I can't complain about the quality and quantity of early 20th century architecture that I now must explore and learn about. Huge brick warehouses are dotted all around the city, some only a block or two from our new house. Built as department stores, for storage of goods and maybe some light manufacturing, their exterior aesthetics played little or no part in the commercial success or failure of the enterprises within. Customers did not need to be drawn in by fancy glasswork or twisted metal facades or even neon signs which were just appearing at that time. A plain, rectangular brick box with no pretense served its purpose just fine. Kind of interesting how these days it is usually a logo () that draws in the consuming public. The building type or style is still secondary to what's inside but why has the architecture become so dog ugly, unimaginative, hasty and simply disposable such that nobody will put up a fight when the bulldozers come to knock down a structure that never had any big ambition to make itself a part of the community and a part of peoples lives? I suspect the answer is $.
I took these () photos on Saturday. You'll note from the photographs that some serious internal construction is under way. These warehouse buildings will not be imploded to make way for crap that none of us need but instead are being respectfully renovated so that they can be rented out as loft space for artists. More info here on the future development (). It's really encouraging so see a move like this being made by the city. They could have let various big name franchise restaurants and coffee shops move in and then squeeze them for more rent and taxes than they will ever get from the artist lofts development. Somebody or maybe a simple majority in the city planning authority put the brakes on greed and chose something better. Good for them. This happens a lot here and I love it.
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24 June 2006 -
Swiggin'
I was bathing Elise on Wednesday night. During the course of the bath we often hold a cup of (bath) water to her lips and let her lap the contents out like a dog. She's been trying to grab things lately so I had the hunch that she might be up to job on her own. I filled the cup and held it near her. She reached out, grabbed it (clumsily) and started drinking the water () all by herself! Hide the booze!
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14 June 2006 -
Menomonie, WI
I stopped in Menomonie last Wednesday night to photograph this () beauty.
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12 June 2006 -
Hard as nails
Our little () thug.
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25 May 2006 -
UC
“United Crushers”, “Urban Celebrities”, “Union Crew” and “Ultra Crack”. You figure it out. Involves Minneapolis graffiti.
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18 May 2006 -
The Golfer
I saw him again tonight. Who did you see? Why, the mysterious weirdo that drives a golf cart at break neck speeds around the neighborhood of course. When the sun goes down this shadowy figure rides like the wind. It’s the second time we’ve crossed paths. I’ve been alone each time. The lack of an alibi or fellow witness is irritating. This fucker exists! His motives are most bewildering. Does he fight crime in this stealth machine? It is the perfect vehicle for such work. It has no lights (of course it doesn’t, who plays golf in the dark for God’s sake?), so appearing as if from nowhere is quite easily accomplished. It is silent because it’s powered by an electric motor, so creeping up on people, like me, is bread and butter stuff.
Perhaps crime fighting is not his game. My perfectly ordinary obsession with Batman () time and again makes me think that anyone who innocently takes a walk or rides their bike during random hours of darkness is on a mission to clean up this urban death maze.
The Golfer is up to something and this man won’t rest until he finds out what.
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08 May 2006 -
Acting the maggot
More photos () of young Elise. She's going to visit her granny this weekend in Wisconsin. Lucky girl. Her folks are going too.
It's such a great time of year to visit The Dairy State. Perfect temperature, no mosquitoes, plenty of outdoor beer drinking, perhaps a stumble through the woods (), possibly a canoe () trip too, maybe even a big camp fire () on Fran's land... if I play my cards right.
Straying slightly off the point, here's a little known fact: Martha can count cards. Never take her on in any game of skill. Quite humiliating. And don't get me started on Scrabble. Crushing defeat after crushing defeat. All hail Scrablor!
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03 May 2006 -
Bubble girl
Bath time ()!
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30 April 2006 -
iMac
I was in an Apple store yesterday and was literally moved by the beauty of the hardware on display. The store reminded me of a scene from Blur's video for The Universal. All that white.
My Windows powered Dell computer has been nothing but a bitch to use. It spends more time seized up and complaining that an application has failed to load, that Photoshop is not responding or that iTunes does not recognize my iPod than actually doing its intended job. The thing is like an old man on his last legs. I've been so tempted on too many occasions to pour a bucket of (ice cold) water over the keyboard and laugh as the machine fought in vain for survival. Time to try something new.
Anyone I know who owns a Mac never fails to demonstrate to me the stealth and speed of the machine and its sheer ability to deal with graphics quickly and without groaning. And of course there is the aesthetic superiority of a Mac over anything else on the market.
Yes, I'm moving up in the world.
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24 April 2006 -
Various
Swung by the Ruffridge Johnson place on Sunday (), then crossed over 280 (), a few minutes later an electricity box thing caught my eye (), posed for a family photo back at the ranch (). All in a days work.
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22 April 2006 -
Polaroid lady strikes again
More gold ((), (), (), ()) from Mrs. Duerr.
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21 April 2006 -
Spring
New baby (), new job (), new house () and a wedding () less than two months away. Many a finger in many a pie. Hey, it beats sitting around picking me hole.
“Everyone loves a baby,” as the saying goes. Never thought I’d fall into that category. In fact, I avoided contact with babies all my life. It just didn’t seem right, to be mauling someone else’s chisler, be it sibling, newborn cousin or offspring of life long friend. They appear so delicate that the slightest flick of the wrist or sneaky gust of wind could render the poor child an invalid. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing? But my outlook changed as I got to hold Elise in the minutes after her birth. She seemed ergonomically designed to fit the placement of my arms and the curve of my palms. Supporting her load was near effortless. Our centers of gravity were somehow allied.
And here's how it really went down at the hospital... The birth process was probably the most frightening event I’ve ever witnessed. I tried to play the role of the modern partner, I really did. You know, being there for the big moment, coaching with the breathing and pushing. I was putting in a stellar performance. Man of the match stuff. Then the little head appeared. I was still there, flying the flag, knocking them out of the ballpark and other such sporting metaphors. Suddenly darkness began to wash over me. All the blood from my neck up drained south, rapidly. I felt a dramatic temperature drop in my face. My eyes became heavy as bags of coal. My once confident, possibly cocky words of encouragement turned to gibberish as my brain, having lost all its oxygen rich fuel, gave up the ability to form coherent speech. I managed to blurt something along the lines of “think I pass out now...” at which point a nurse chucked me out the door and gave me a glass of water. The miracle of birth continued without my presence. It waits for no man. But, like a boxer coming out of a daze as the bell summons him out of his corner for another round, I got it together and went back into the room. I’d missed the moment where the baby actually came all the way out and I’d also missed the cutting of the umbilical cord. How long was I out there? Thoughts of letting the team down were pointless and maybe even selfish. The team did just fine without me, maybe my removal was a key move. It wasn’t about me anyway. It was all about Martha and the baby, who was placed in my arms as I stumbled back into the room. End of story.
As a young pup I learned at school that spring is a time for new life. Lambs frolicking in green fields and daffodils in every garden were just a few of the ways in which God blessed us. Personally, I think science makes the grass grow and day turn into night, but if you want a public school education in Ireland you’re obliged to take a heavy dose of Catholicism if you want to get the book learnin’. The last of the snow melted about three weeks ago, heralding the arrival of spring. No sign of any lambs in Minneapolis but in the spirit of rebirth and transformation and in order to move along I felt that trip down memory lane was a necessary bridge in the narrative. I got me a new job is the essence of what I am saying. I threw off the dust of my previous employer. The work visa situation held me captive there for too long. That’s all fixed now and I’m a free agent. I found everything I was searching for and hope to really build something with this () company.
Spring is great.
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09 April 2006 -
Shelter
Our fingers and toes are crossed but it's looking pretty good that we might own this () place by the end of May. Please God don't let this impatient announcement jinx our dreams.
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07 April 2006 -
Mood swings
This morning's fashion show () ended in tears.
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02 April 2006 -
Back in the game
The honeymoon of unemployment draws to a close one week from today. Scored me a job with Enpath Medical () so I did. Pretty damn pleased about this new avenue.
In the visuals department, things have been slow but by no means static. Commandeered Martha’s Polaroid 600 camera with mixed results (), she’s the master ((), (), (), ()), checked out some Lego like containers (), took Elise down to the grain elevators one morning ((), ()), finally got to photograph a bricked up electricity substation that always catches me eye (), drew a picture of a few clowns looking at the sun (), blue is me favorite color (), used Google Earth for me own ends ().
Good times.
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27 March 2006 -
A few shades off the mark
It’s kudos time. Let’s get that out of the way right now. A friend of mine back in the old country has a really great blog (). Heck of a guy, as they say in The States. I play the role of digital parasite, feeding off the links he posts, siphoning new ideas and inspiration from what floats his boat. Granted, a decent percentage of the external links will lead to sites dealing with web development languages and technologies (XML, XSLT, AJAX, CSS...) that I know fuck all about but there are also a fair quantity of links for the lay man.
He recently posted a link () related to the subconscious, accidental art of graffiti cover up. The artists being the city workers detailed with slapping mundane concrete shades of paint over vivid and unsanctioned works of public art. I spent a while thinking about what I had read at (). It brought to mind personal observations of this tit for tat relationship between those who paint graffiti and those who try to pretend it never happened. The graffiti temporarily exists, is removed, appears elsewhere and is once again blotted out, all with the end result of the urban surface being forever altered which is exactly what those who run the city have been fighting against. Nobody wins. It’s hard to imagine any civic manager being passionate about coordinating this removal effort. What satisfaction can be taken home from a day’s work when you know that as soon as you go to sleep the graffiti artists begin their shift, providing you with your work for the following day? Tit for tat, back and forth, up and down, profit and loss... cyclic, rhythmic. Those who win are the likes of me, the man who walks the street and drives the freeways noticing fresh graffiti, and counting the days until it is replaced by a rough rectangle that’s three shades different from the surface it tries to mimic.
Mental sustenance and being privy to art mixed with crime mixed with psychological warfare between city government and artist is the reward. It fractures the monotony of the drive to work in the gray dead of winter with bursts of color in unexpected places. The façade of the city approximates the walls of a gallery with a rotating catalog of artists that any museum would be jealous of. The stealth with which Minneapolis removes graffiti seems to feed the problem and nourish the artists. The city is wasting money in trying to defeat something that it perpetuates.
Anyway, here () are my findings on The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal. Hopefully I have added something to the dialogue.
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26 March 2006 -
Polaroid lady
A couple of quality Polaroids from the wife ().
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22 March 2006 -
Prior Avenue
Martha and Elise () back on the mean streets of St. Paul today.
You just know they're gonna topple that building any day now. Those plywood windows are a dead give away. A damn shame.
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21 March 2006 -
Mother and daughter
Martha () and Elise in downtown St. Paul.
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18 March 2006 -
Happy St. Patrick's Day
"Top of the morning to ye on this gray, grizzly afternoon. Kent O'Brockman here, live on Main Street, where today everyone is a little bit Irish, except, of course, for the gays and the Italians."
Kent Brockman
For most people I’m sure it was an accordingly messy day commemorating Ireland’s patron saint. God bless you all! Unfortunately I was not able to contribute to the flowing rivers of blood and green vomit this year. Earnestly putting in my hours at the fatherhood trade was I, and it’s worth every second. I’m apprehensive about letting this site transform into a cutesy, egocentric testament to Elise’s affect on our lives. Although the agenda of the blog may be vague there are some unwritten rules that govern its output (no half ass political analyses, no arrogant opinions on matters partially researched, no disclosure of these unwritten rules... oops) but it’s hard to pretend that life will ever be the same again and it is wrong, selfish and even shameful to suppress such delight for the sake of obsessively-compulsively adhering to such daft constraints. Inhibiting any form of organic behavior inevitably leads to problems. Try and kill a worm by chopping him in half, now you’ve got yourself two worms. Build a house too close to a tree and over time those roots will jack your house up and crack your walls good.
So the blog will be whatever it needs to be and that’s that. Phew.
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16 March 2006 -
Family fortunes...
The baby
Elise () continues to make us happy. Yeah, we'll keep her. A new friend () of hers is also proving to be a big hit around the joint.
The old man
Junk worthy of a mention. Self storage () building off University Avenue in St. Paul and some graffiti ().
The mother
Martha () hasn't been slacking off either. No sir. In fact, she took these () Polaroids the same day Elise was born. Yeah, nothing like an unemployed man and a pregnant lady (in labor at the time) checking out a trash pile by the train tracks. Wouldn't have it any other way.
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13 March 2006 -
Hiawatha hump yards
Martha () and I were down at the Hiawatha hump yards on the day Elise ((), ()) was born. It was nine days past the due date and we were bored as crap loafing around the apartment not so patiently waiting for her to be born, so we hit the streets. Minnesota Commercial Railroad () uses this yard as storage for empty grain and liquid cars () and you’ll typically see up to 50 cars there, the same ones for weeks at a time. The longer they sit the more they get attacked by graffiti painting punks. And when there is no rail stock about, the delinquents paint all over () the yard walls.
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12 March 2006 -
Baby
My cold heart () has been melted. Get used to it.
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10 March 2006 -
Baby
Elise Niamh Dunne () was born at 20:12 (Minneapolis time) on Thursday 09 March 2006.
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26 February 2006 -
Dreams of beans
I ceased shaving two weeks ago. If a man is to be unemployed he should play the part. My work visa expired last Friday and I have to wait a maximum of six weeks until my immigration situation rights itself. This isn’t a big shock, it was only an 18 month visa and I knew from the start that I’d have to face a certain period of downtime.
Prior to reentering the working world it will be obligatory to no longer resemble Rashers Tierney. It’s not that beards are unwelcome or that sporting one would prevent me from being hired. No, the problem is that I am short and don’t fancy being known as the new guy who looks like a garden gnome. I’ll enjoy my bum beard, but when it’s time to work again I’ll have to shear her off. What a perfect opportunity to fulfill a life long dream though? I’m talking about a hot towel shave here.
My dreams last night were strange, such is the nature of dreaming I suppose so there is no reason why this particular dream should be anymore noteworthy than those of Thursday night or Wednesday night... A mysterious figure took me to the top of a stone tower on the edge of the city. Looking down I observed a complete absence of urban sprawl eating into the land, consuming the trees and substituting farms for gas stations and fast food restaurants. Instead of all that crap there was a sudden and definite point where the city ended and the land began. Maybe the city was contained by walls. Or maybe the city had come ready made and was just dropped onto the landscape and prohibited from extending beyond its original size. In an aerial photo the scene might look like a grey and brown version of the Japanese flag. Its perfectly circular perimeter was hard to comprehend. From the top of the tower I was able to see all the way north to the Canadian border, a distance of nearly 300 miles. One vast field of soy beans stretched from here to there. My eyes had a high zoom capability and I was able to see individual soy plants anywhere within that 300 mile expanse. Had there been civilization I would have been able to count freckles on the faces of folks living in Duluth, International Falls, Fargo and other towns, but there were no towns at all, only soy beans.
Our baby is due to be born this week. Today I made building blocks for her from some rough and dirty 2” x 2” oak pallet lumber. The blocks are chunky and deceptively heavy for their size so if I get one flung at me I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up in the hospital. I sliced the boards to produce cubes of 2” side. Each face was then skimmed to liberate the beautiful grain hiding beneath the surface. The rich, dark, almost aristocratic smell of the freshly cut end grain is such a reward.
And so unemployment, tea drinking, beer drinking, photography, woodworking, beard maintenance and eager, possibly amateur parenting will fill my days until mid April rolls around. Good times.
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25 February 2006 -
Old Glory
Flags () a flappin' in the wind.
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21 February 2006 -
Chislers
"Kids are great. You can teach them to hate the same things you hate and they practically raise themselves, what with the internet and all."
Homer Simpson
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20 February 2006 -
Recent shenanigans
Marquette elevator (), a flock of mad birds (), the iron horse (), some trucks left out in the cold ().
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12 February 2006 -
Eye in the sky
I discovered Google Earth () this morning while avoiding housework. First of all, I don't think Google would have built in a "Save Image" option if they didn't want me to export images for my own use, so here () goes. The intersection of the gray lines is our house. To the north is my playground, the grain elevators and train tracks.
Second of all, good God! Yes, satellite photography has been around since the 1960's and aerial photography since the earliest cameras were taken up in hot air balloons but this technology is something else.
In the space of five minutes I was able to visit all three capital cities of the Axis of Evil. Tehran and Baghdad (still a member of the axis?) were vaster than I had imagined, and particularly close to the ground in terms of average building height, possibly a function of the materials used to build structures in those countries. From an altitude of 5,000m both cities looked like some highly viscous tan colored liquid that had been poured into the desert.
Pyongyang, capital of North Korea was the most intriguing axis city. From above it looks like a decent western city with its parks, stadiums, museums, galleries and a freeway system that Ireland would be lucky to have by the year 2106. But here’s the somber bit, there are virtually no vehicles () to be found on the People's roads.
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08 February 2006 -
The city
For reasons unknown I feel an almost magnetic allure to the gritty, industrial, smoke stack cities of America. Non tourist traps such as Indianapolis, Cleveland, Billings, Trenton, Gary, Detroit, Cheyenne, Bozeman, Milwaukee, Boise, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia have stories to tell.
Minneapolis (), where we live, has a distinctive whiff of grain, oil, grease and human sweat. Less evident these days for sure but downtown buildings like The Lumber Exchange, The Grain Exchange, the freight railroads that criss-cross Minneapolis like slash marks from the paws of a ferocious bear and the grain elevators that make their home without public protest in the midst of residential neighborhoods all point to a past where human effort and the infrastructure of man’s toil; brutalist architecture, came first, conventional aesthetics and appearance second. But time has rusted the steel, yellowed and cracked the paint, crumbled the bricks and rotted the wood. However, beauty has become the by-product, an accident, of a city that doesn’t concern itself with the maintenance of a once unsullied exterior. Do it once, do it right seems to have been the manifesto.
We’ll not discuss the strip mall and fast food franchise () epidemic that dooms both rural and urban America to an identically and disorientating future. For now cities like Minneapolis are safe as developers have their eyes set on the suburbs whose population’s insatiable appetite for “stuff” perpetuates a spread outwards, not inwards, leaving the heart of the city beating strong, but slowly decaying (), much to my pleasure.
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05 February 2006 -
Some UP's
Down at the train tracks (). If the sky is blue that's where you'll find me.
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03 February 2006 -
Kitchen tales
We were bored and hungry last night so we got creative in the kitchen. The hunter-gatherer, breadwinner, soon to be sole provider for a young family went to the supermarket and bought ice cream, milk and chocolate biscuits/cookies. I got back to headquarters and Martha fired up the new blender to make a McFlurry for herself and a vanilla milkshake for me.
A sugar buzz and the excitement of watching the kitchen lady so naturally crack recipes too often and too greedily safeguarded by large corporations killed my boredom.
This domestic scene reminded me of my youth, back in the old country (excuse me while I wipe an immigrant tear from my eye), watching with awe as my mam made McDonalds like chips/fries for us kids. She cut those spuds into strips as thin as shoe laces and flash fried them into perfect strands of golden starch and oil. Such an example of selfless devotion can never be forgotten and sits high on my list of ways to be a great parent.
And in a totally unrelated vein here () is some recent shitehawkery.
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01 February 2006 -
FEP
Anyone ever wanted to know about () heat shrink tubing? Didn't think so.
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30 January 2006 -
In response to Chris
Dirty Three, Kreidler, Björk, Múm, Lackluster, Quiet American, Röyksopp, Buck 65, Prefuse 73, Boards of Canada, Low, The Cinematic Orchestra, Kings of Convenience, Quasimoto, Pulp, The Album Leaf, Pan American, Yo La Tengo, Beck, Fourtet, Attica Blues, Pulse Programming, Neil Young, Schneider TM, God Speed You Black Emperor, Erlend Øye, Swod, David Kitt, Labradford, Anti Pop Consortium, Badly Drawn Boy, The Coral, Pole, 90 Degrees South, Timo Maas, Cornelius...
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28 January 2006 -
Another road
Contemplating the birth of a second blog (). An extremely introverted, exploration of the inanimate content of American cities; tracks, bricks, pipes, paint, glass, machines...
We'll see though. 28 February 2006, enter a youngster!
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23 January 2006 -
My world
Detail from late 1800's Wisconsin barn roof (), before the sun went down at the Kurth elevator (), an evil water tower (), a lonesome corner building, its neighbors victims of progress devoid of character (), numbers on a wall near the Pillsbury "A" Mill (), more train graffiti (), that ubiquitous poster (), a business partner down at grain bins ().
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17 January 2006 -
Machine dreams
I’ve been known to buy a lot of crap on t’internet (read with Yorkshire accent) but today’s purchases takes the biscuit. Let’s see what we got.
1. Molded Nylon, 14.5° Pressure Angle, Spur Gear, 32 Pitch, 14 Teeth, 0.438" Pitch Diameter, 0.125" Bore Diameter.
2. Molded Nylon, 14.5° Pressure Angle, Spur Gear Rack, 32 Pitch, 0.1875" Face Width, 12” Length.
3. Trapezoidal Tooth Neoprene Rubber Timing Belt, 0.200" Pitch, Trade Size 160XL, 16" Outer Circle, 0.25" Width.
4. Acetal Timing-Belt Pulley with Aluminum Hub, 1.00" Diameter, 12 Teeth.
And what in the name of Christ would a man need this pile of junk for? Oh, just a little machine that is going to make me a zillionaire. Top secret stuff right now.
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12 January 2006 -
This and that
A near desolate Wyoming highway (), a felled Wisconsin tree (), a Minnesota working man's truck (), a lost shopping trolley (), a hollow train car (), an unloved warehouse on Wabash St. (), engine 66 awaiting the scrapyard ().
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04 January 2006 -
Getting close
FINALLY WAS ABLE TO SEND IN THE FUCKIN’ APPLICATION FOR A GOD DAMN MOTHERFUCKIN’ ADJUSTMENT OF STATUS TO PERMANENT FUCKIN’ RESIDENT... EIGHT FUCKIN’ KABILLION PIECE OF SHIT FORMS... ENOUGH PAPER TO BUILD A FUCKIN’ TREE HOUSE... AND DON’T GET ME GOING ON THE INSANE INTANGIBILITY OF THE MYRIAD OF RULES AND REQUIREMENTS... YOU’D NEED A FUCKIN’ LAWYER! WE DID NEED A LAWYER! GOD BLESS THAT BASTARD, WITHOUT HIM WE’D STILL BE TAKING HALF BAKED TOTALLY BOLLOX ADVICE FROM THAT CIRCUS THAT HAS THE GALL TO BE CONSIDERED A FUCKIN’ EMBASSY... AND THEN THERE’S THE SMALL MATTER OF NEARLY $1,500 OF HARD EARNED CASH FUNDING THIS BIZARRE FUCKIN’ PROCESS...
AH FREEDOM, IT’S ALWAYS WORTH IT!
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27 December 2005 -
Africa
Minneapolis weather () plot approximating a map of Africa. Strange.
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23 December 2005 -
Comic footwear
I received a Christmas bonus this week, the fine sum of $100. No, it didn’t knock my socks off; in fact it was an utterly miserable offering bordering on insult but them’s the breaks around here. All other facets of my existence are exceptionally positive so I thought I should focus less on the amount of cash and more on how creative I could be with it.
With a baby due in less than three months and Martha quitting her job as soon as the youngster arrives we have been making a concerted effort to squirrel away some rainy day money. That’s had the effect of $100 of expendable money making me lightheaded with ridiculous dreams of exuberant and opulent purchases. Ooh, an original Faberge Egg! Ok, $100 might not stretch that far but five pairs of these () bad boys could be all mine.
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22 December 2005 -
Patent pending
A while ago I started writing down concepts that I believed had the potential to become million dollar ideas. I set these thoughts aside with the intention of coming back to them during moments of boredom. Of course, most of them already exist, like the mirror that doesn’t fog up when you shave and the machine that wraps Christmas presents.
But there are a few that have definite commercial potential like reusable heat shrink tubing that would revolutionize the medical catheter manufacturing business. This idea is reliant on the development of a heat activated memory fluropolymer such as Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene (FEP). This one keeps me up at night... I can virtually smell the dollars and the respect of my fellow man.
Ok, enough shite...
Hold onto your hat because this next one is the real deal. I call it Central Tea™.
This scenario should illustrate my concept. A regular Sunday morning will find me in the shed sawing/drilling/gluing something. The radio is on, I’m nice and warm, relaxed and not thinking about work. What could compliment this perfect moment? A cup of tea, damn right. But the house is at the other end of the garden, awfully distant from the tea making machines and materials. Naturally, there’s no reason why I couldn’t go into the house and make the tea myself and nothing prevents me having a kettle in the shed and a fridge to store the milk but this still means that I have to physically make the tea. It’s Sunday and as the good book says, “Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God and in it thou shalt not do any work." (Exodus 20:8-10)
Keeping the Sabbath sacred went out of fashion years ago but it’s an infallibly moral justification to develop the Central Tea ™ plan. If a man has God on his side how can he fail?
A common domestic heating technology utilizes a boiler to heat water and then distribute that hot water to a network of radiators around the house. It’s an architecture similar to the body’s arterial system with the heart acting as a pump circulating blood to all corners of the body. I’m always intrigued how the inspiration for the finest engineering solutions can be traced back to the most natural of sources. Central Tea ™ is founded on the principle that a man should be able to have a cup of tea anytime the mood takes him, without having to make it himself. Some may argue that half the pleasure in drinking the stuff is actually making it and watching it mature, but this isn’t like observing a pint of Guinness swirl and darken to life. Although I don’t like the black stuff I have always admired the patience and control of the old man sitting at a bar waiting for his pint and indeed the power which the stout has over him. I can’t imagine a more tranquil 192 seconds in life. I remember going to mass many years ago and every time spacing out during the priest’s sermon. The man of the cloth would talk for 20 minutes or more, striking fear, respect and awe in those who believed what he said. Me though, I never was able to recall one word he had spoken, because boredom or just the peacefulness of the environment had frozen my ability to think. It was and is the only time in life I have been able to enjoy a state of serene nothingness. The Zen of Catholicism.
So, no, I don’t accept as true that producing the tea is crucial to the joy acquired from its consumption. For me, tea is something that ought to be as attainable as water. What I am getting at with Central Tea ™ is that I should be able to hold a cup under a tap and out of it will pour hot tea, with milk and sugar already blended in. My location in the house is irrelevant because a system of pipes will carry the tea from its central boiler (the heart) to anywhere in the domicile or peripheral buildings, such as the shed.
Am I really asking for too much?
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13 December 2005 -
Excursions
A Chinese restaurant (), a flour and grain mill (), some dilapidated buildings (), a freight train (), a freight train sporting some graffiti ().
Life continues to go according to plan in Minneapolis.
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04 December 2005 -
Winter
The weather wheel (), see December 2005.
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30 November 2005 -
Silence
"Beware of the high cost of low living", read a Christian church notice board in suburban Minneapolis. We saw that on a recent mission of discovery around the city. Yes, even the suburbs are dotted with moments of absurdity. And so to current events...
Snow falls this evening and with it comes a silence synonymous only with snow. On a normal night the pulsing, beautifully rhythmic drone of the freeway can be felt outside our house but tonight I hear nowt. Three inches have accumulated in as many hours. The white blanket absorbs and diffuses harsh street lights so that it is impossible to experience anything but tranquility.
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19 November 2005 -
The weather man
Tracking the climate (), for no specific reason.
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07 November 2005 -
Crushed dreams
Martha and I were at an art supplies shop this evening procuring materials for her upcoming Polaroid exhibition in Madison, Wisconsin, when I came across something so foolish and pointless I had to have it. A pack of seven assorted stick-on mustaches hung temptingly before my eyes, bright yellow packaging mocking me, demanding I take you home. A mere $3, knocked down from $5, a sin to leave behind. “That wouldn’t get you a gallon of milk for jaysus sake,” I pleaded. She was having none of it. The woman had put the foot down.
Each mustache had a name and a day of the week it was to be worn. There was “The Sheriff,” which could give an ominous, menacing and steely edge to my persona.
There was “The Barber,” thick, heavy and hanging just over the upper lip. A tough, red meaty face would need to accompany this number. Something for the weekend perhaps.
The list goes on.
I’m 26 for God’s sake! What could I possibly want with seven fake mustaches? Laugh if you wish but it’s hard to deny that a set of photo portraits with me sporting a different mustache in each wouldn’t be the funniest thing this side of Christmas.
It’ll happen. She’ll let her guard down. A weak moment will present itself. I’ll make an excuse that we need a half dozen eggs, slip out to the car and drive and break-neck speed to Roseville, pick up the mustaches and hide them in a bush outside the house. Then, when she’s out someday I’ll spend an hour or two taking ridiculous photos of myself. Is it a mark of self confidence that I share this tale or a complete absence of dignity?
Oh, it’ll happen.
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29 October 2005 -
Convoluted
1. Photo taken in the 70's by Dad on slide film. Slides stored in attic for 30 years. Slides brought to me in America by Mam, earlier this year. Slide projected onto wall. Projected image photographed, digitally. Photo () posted on website.
2. Photo taken in the 70's by Dad on slide film. Slides stored in attic for 30 years. Slides brought to me in America by Mam, earlier this year. Slide projected onto wall. Projected image traced onto paper. Drawing scanned on computer. Drawing () posted on website.
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27 October 2005 -
Cowboy's
My sister works in a pub at night to fund her hectic social life and pay for a college text book or two. The following is an incident she witnessed the other night at work. Non Irish readers of this story probably won’t get it but hey, I don’t get why millions of American's like baseball or peanut butter. There are cultural differences between societies. These exist to maintain diversity, thus spawning stories...
“I saw the funniest thing on Sunday night. I really wish you'd been there with your trusty camera."
"The scene: Across from The Village Inn there's a dodgy lane where I’ve never dared go. Down the end of the dodgy lane is a dodgy stable where all the local teenage tracksuit-wearing-John-Player-Blue-smoking-cider-drinking scumbags keep their horses. Now I don't know if it was a rival band of horsemen that set the stable alight but somebody did. The little scumbags were quick enough to get their steeds (by that I mean pie-bald horsie’s) out."
"So I went out to see what all the commotion was about. The rain was torrential and there, standing outside Dario's chipper was a kid of about 7, filthy, wearing the uniform tracksuit and holding the reins of a giant black horse. I thought it totally summed up Dublin. Dirty little kid, 11 o'clock on a school night, standing outside a
chipper in the pissing rain with his horse."
"That's the stuff of guide books.”
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21 October 2005 -
More than bricks
Watching the news this evening the main story dealt with a no-good-punk-kid who was badly injured when climbing inside a grain elevator (what's a grain elevator? this is a grain elevator ()). The grain elevator in question is located in north Minneapolis.
It’s a magnificent structure and focal point for graffiti artists. The smooth concrete walls are heavily sprayed with every color under the sun. Martha and I took a bike ride there last summer to check it out because it looks like one of those places on a demolition list. It had all the traits of an abandoned industrial facility, smell of piss, carpet of beer bottles, homeless people taking shelter, hundreds of golf balls both inside and outside. Golf balls? Martha, being a shrewd logician, deduced that kids were driving golf balls at the building in a competitive window smashing game.
That day was one of the first times I paid attention to and investigated something that has been forgotten by the city. I’ll never forget it.
My pursuit of photography has ingrained in me the adage: carpe diem, seize the day. I’ve been burned many times by my failure to understand the necessity of this thinking. “Sure, I can photograph that tomorrow, the light will be better then… What’s the rush? That old blue car will still be there next weekend… I’ll just go home and get a better lens…” Never happens. The moment is always lost. Beating the odds is rare and rewarding. The University of Minnesota secretly and mercilessly tore down this () masterpiece of golden brick a few days after we had explored it. Later that month I saw “RIP MGK” sprayed on a wall nearby. Graphic and anonymous remorse for something that was so much more than just stone, glass and steel.
I find it fascinating that people I don’t even know can mirror my thoughts with what they write directly “onto” the surface of the city. A similar incident occurred late in September. It was a warm evening, t-shirt temperature. I wanted to ride my bike forever, pulling energy from my incessant enthusiasm for everything I saw, smelled and heard. I came across a few grain cars down at the train tracks. One of them had a nice piece of graffiti on it. Look what the guy wrote to the right () of the photo. Maybe you needed to be there too but it was like he was encouraging appreciation of how his work interacted with the rust, colors and the quality of the light given off by the setting sun. Amazing.
If only I could better write the words that explain the world ((), ()) I have discovered. I'll keep trying.
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20 October 2005 -
Titim na hoíche
An early attempt () at night photography. The dark, cold winter nights won't keep me indoors. Me bollix!
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15 October 2005 -
Flickr
Martha () has gotten in on the Flickr game.
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08 October 2005 -
A tale of two cities
I often refer to this place as the twin cities because less than 10 miles from Minneapolis is another city, St. Paul. We don’t have this phenomenon at home in Ireland. Minneapolis and St. Paul are two distinctly different places. They each have their own mayor, one is a non smoking city, one is not, and both are on the same side of the Mississippi River so the comparison to somewhere like Budapest can’t be made. If you were blindfolded, tossed in the back of a van, driven around in circles for a few hours to mess up your bearings, perhaps given a few digs to guarantee disorientation, and then unblindfolded inside a pub you’ve never been in I wager you’d know what city you were in. There are unmistakable differences in the people and their behaviors. It is refreshing to experience such diversity over the distance of only a few miles in a vast country that too often looks the same, in terms of the identical retailers, chain restaurants and suburban homes that border every highway and encircle every town.
I live in Minneapolis and seldom have any reason to visit St. Paul. We pass by but not through it on our way to Wisconsin and we visit the science museum about once a year but that’s it. St. Paul is not an action packed place; in fact it is dead, always dead. Minnesota writer Garrison Keillor says that St. Paul at its busiest and wildest is like New York at 06:00 on a Sunday morning, in winter. I added the winter bit myself because although his analogy is apt and authority as a writer infallible it just doesn’t paint the picture clear enough for me. Maybe an Irish version of the comparison would be a cold, grey and wet Athlone at 06:00 on Christmas Day.
An opportunity presented itself to make a trip to downtown St. Paul today. The Minnesota chapter of the American Woodturners Association rented some gallery space and put on a show for the public. Woodturning was a vice of mine for a few years and one that will be indulged in again once a house, with shed, is bought. Incidentally, the shed will have tea making facilities. I didn’t come all the way to Minnesota to have to make tea inside the house then transport it, by hand, to the shed. To hell with that!
I drove to St. Paul giving myself an extra hour to go and check out one of the busiest freight train yards in the state. The plan was to ditch the car and explore on foot. The problem with that idea was that I possessed no small currency to plug into a parking meter. Not a big issue I thought, I’ll just go to one of the many off street car parks. The benefits of a city that people don’t visit are an abundance of good parking spots. I saw loads of places where I could park the car for the whole day in exchange for only $1.50. The problem with this city though is that there are no humans working at the car parks. I need a human being to break my $20 into smaller money which I can then put into the honesty based payment system, a huge box with loads of coin size slits each numbered to correspond to the space you parked in. You park, take note of the number of the parking space, go to the box, and lash a few quarters into the slit with your number on it. During the day I assume that somebody, maybe even a robot, does a spot check and those stupid enough to scam the place for the $1.50 fee get towed away and their car is held to ransom for nearly $200.
So, cheap car parks were off the menu. I’ll try my luck at a slightly more expensive multi-story car park or “ramp” as the Americans call them. My sense of direction is pretty shabby so this deviation from the plan of parking close to the gallery and learning the lay of the land during my hour of exploration was now in tatters. I’m not lost yet but apprehension is kicking in. I find a ramp and pull into it. I press the ticket button and nothing happens. I notice a sign that says “RAMP CLOSED SATURDAYS.” I reverse out onto the street and make a few lefts and a few rights in search of another ramp. I’m totally lost by the way. Another ramp appears on my right, I pull into it but a sign says “RESIDENTS ONLY.” Again, I fling the car into reverse and squeal off on my seemingly futile quest. I’m cursing at this point and pondering a high speed escape to Minneapolis. No, show resolve I tell myself, you’re here to see some woodturning and won’t be defeated by this crap. Ultimately I find an open ramp and ditch the car. These foreign streets hold no clues as to where I am relative to the gallery. I walk the empty streets. All restaurants and shops are closed. Time is 10:00. Day is Saturday. The occasional car drives by. Busses with no passengers glide eerily past. I’m lost and I’m lonely! Where the hell is everyone? This would be the perfect city to film a movie whose plot is the evaporation of the human race due to a pandemic disease or radiological disaster.
The gallery appears on a corner opposite a tidy park complete with a bunch of alcoholics sharing a giant bottle of vodka. I was the only person at the show. I talked tools and lathes with the demonstrator for a half hour then left. Nice guy but it was starting to get awkward when nobody else was showing up.
The sky was blue. The air was cold and dry. My hands were cracked and sore from the lack of humidity. Conditions ripe for photos () of excellent clarity.
Time to find the car. I spent about 30 minutes wandering a two block radius searching in vain. Ugly and identical 1970’s built office buildings loomed over me, blocking all warmth from the sun on an already freezing day. I called Martha, gave her the street intersection from where I was making the distress call and the address of the ramp as it was typed on the ticket. Nice touch that. She punched the start and finish coordinates into Mapquest. Mapquest displayed a map with two dots directly on top of each other. I looked across the street and noticed the parking ramp that had eluded me so well. God bless computers.
I got to the car and drove down to the ground floor via a tight helix that mimicked a water slide. I got to the pay kiosk but didn’t see any attendant. He must be on lunch I thought. Wrong, this was an automated deal. I smugly slid my $20 into the pay machine. $17 in quarters, 68 coins total pumped slot machine style into my hands. At that point I decided to get the fuck out of St. Paul before things got worse.
I drove down by the river. The urban environment had failed to motivate me. The gold was there but I didn’t know what time of day the light would fall on the buildings that took my fancy, unlike in Minneapolis. I drove to where I knew there was industrial infrastructure and spotted a nice collection () of rusty storage tanks. These were private roads so I took off toward Minneapolis to avoid confrontation with any law enforcement agencies. Less than a mile into the trip I pulled over to look at a row of painted concrete pillars that supported an overhead railroad bridge. The cracked up surface () was long overdue a new coat of yellow gloss.
20 minutes later I was back on familiar turf, Minneapolis. The magnificent weather persisted so I frequented some of my favorite photography places () in an attempt to salvage the day that St. Paul had robbed me of.
Moral of the story: St. Paul is not for those easily aggravated.
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07 October 2005 -
Gender
It's () a girl.
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02 October 2005 -
Harmony
On Friday night we were over at Fro and Nate's for a fire. I listened to two small-town Minnesota friends swap stories about rural entertainment. Doug offered warm and graphic memories of a combine harvester demolition derby he had attended. Nate lectured on the relationship between scraggy mustaches, NASCAR racing and support for President Bush.
Without much planning or hesitation we talked ourselves into going camping the next morning to the Minnesota/Iowa border area. It's early or maybe mid autumn now. Perfect weather for being outside. We traveled south out of Minneapolis, hugging the Mississippi all the way. It widened and narrowed many times. Old fashioned, Tom Sawyer era paddle ships steamed up and down Old Man River. Mile long freight trains snaked along each side of the water looking like a model railway from the car window.
We stopped in the town of Harmony to eat and explore. I took these photos () of the municipal water tower and an abandoned grain elevator, now home to dirty pigeons.
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27 September 2005 -
Shock and awe
One thing I love about Minnesota, and maybe the Midwest in general, is the definition of the seasons. Although each may not last an equal three months you always know where you stand. Winter is snowy and cold. The snow shovel gets regular use and handy work it is not. That slowly passes and a month of rainy weather announces spring. The countless trees burst into full foliage until a quilt of green is all you can see when you fly over the twin cities. Enter summer. Sticky, hot, brutally humid days confine me to underwear and frustration. Autumn fixes that and things cool down. The leaves phase to red and fall in great numbers. You can actually listen to them swoosh through the air in the same way that rainfall becomes audibly noticeable.
The sun is setting earlier with every evening these days. The race to get home and out on the bike with a camera before it goes to bed is almost a losing battle. This evening I won. Traffic on the highway was light. All the lights turned green for me. I rummaged up a hasty dinner, drank a cup of tea and free wheeled my hole across University Avenue to the grain elevators and freight yard, a place where I am always free from anxiety, composed and in awe. Buildings, colors, textures, rust, sounds and smells take my breath away, every time. I know the light is a photographers dream. I am a rookie but I know when I am witness to perfection. Words will never do any justice to what I’ve seen but perhaps these photos ((), ()) will fill the void.
Perhaps not, you decide.
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20 September 2005 -
Humble men
"I wasn't really a writer. I had seen a strange beautiful light on the hills and that was all."
Patrick Kavanagh
"The highway's a story teller. I just write it down."
Buck65
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17 September 2005 -
Wisconsin
We fled to Waupaca for Labor Day weekend. Fran asked for my help to put windows into his shed/cabin in the woods. I loyally assisted for a short time, then blended into the background and sucked on a few early afternoon bottles of Heineken. Fran momentarily downed tools to refresh his liver. He said to me "this is how a carpenter opens a beer" and with swan-like grace used a claw hammer to pop off the cap. A true joy to watch the man work.
I rambled through his woods, envisioning owning my own land someday on which I could build a dream home, perhaps constructed entirely from Titanium or other exotic alloys, or perhaps not. These fleeting thoughts of rural living are more grounded than one would think. A mere $130,000 will net a man a five bedroom house with a barn () and other outbuildings on a 20 acre site.
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28 August 2005 -
Flickr
Finally jumped on the Flickr () bandwagon. I've posted a few photos but they're the same images you'll see on this site, no new content. Flickr offers some really cool categorization, organization and sharing tools, better than I could ever achieve with my limited HTML knowledge. Plus, it's another way to waste more time in front of the computer.
Just noticed that my spelling checker changes categorisation to categorization and organisation to organization. US English is a tricky language to get used to. Well, it would be if I didn't have a spelling checker in every computer application I use. God knows how the 19th century Irish immigrants did it. Poor bastards.
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19 August 2005 -
The crap I crave
Hob Nobs, Saturday afternoon pints in Hogan's, Saturday night pints in Hogan's, Sunday afternoon pints in Hogan's, the occasional fry, rain, good tea (tay), sense of humor, my shed, Galway, friends, family, stray dogs, the sea, Donal Dineen on Today FM, beer fueled madness, spuds, gravy, roast beef, Kerrygold butter, hang sangwiches, canals, The Ticket, Kehoe's, Christmas in Dublin, brown bread, small towns, Jaffa Cakes, The Pines, BBC, Channel 4, TG4, city energy, Ireland's hedonistic optimism (where are we going, who cares?), Lok Moon food...
Aside from lamenting the above there has been much tomfoolery with cameras lately.
Minneapolis is packed with disused inner city buildings ((), ()) which I assume were once the pride and joy of their parent corporations, before tax breaks and vast tracts of land ripe for development drove companies beyond the city limits. Examining/contemplating these buildings, for me, always conjures up images of the 1930's. An era when every man wore a hat, instead of beer people drank martini's, manhattan's or whiskey sour's, and sharp suit sporting gangsters were public heroes... good times.
By car and bike I'm discovering hidden sides to Minneapolis. Gradually it is winning me over. Affordable stuff, old and young alike walking the streets with near impunity, nice folks, diverse yet integrated population, good jobs, lakes, parks, beautiful old industrial structures (here perfectly captured by Martha ()) untouched by tasteless hands or fresh paint, harsh but defined seasons, easy driving distance to brutal and almost infinite wilderness and graffiti ((), (), (), (), (), (), (), ()) that covers trains and walls bringing a smile to my face and a silent nod of appreciating to those who work under the cover of darkness at this fine craft.
A decent city when you do the sums.
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13 August 2005 -
Please steal my bike
Some time in 2004 I bought a bike, that over the course of only 12 months, six of which it lived in the basement, turned into a piece of crap. You get what you pay for as they say, so I've no regrets over the purchase and sure enough the bike did serve me well during our time together. However, the time has come to get rid of the bastard. Method of disposal options are as follows:
I could sell it though I'm sure the $30 I'd get would be small compensation for the hassle involved. I could trade it in as part payment for a new set of wheels, but again the hassle of dragging it any distance can't be justified. I could give it to a local charity shop, no excuse why I shouldn't.
The plot thickens. I could throw it into a tree that lies below a nearby bridge over the Mississippi River. This tree is already full of old pairs of shoes that people have laced together and cast up into the branches. It's quite a cool thing to drive by or stand under and gawk up at literally hundreds of pairs of used shoes dangling and swaying with the motion of the tree. God knows why it began or who started it. You never see anyone actually hurling shoes at the tree yet there are more every time I look. Only recently I noticed that bikes had begun to populate the tree. There were only four or five last time I looked down over the bridge but it's obvious that something new has begun.
So, my fourth option would be to fling the bike over the edge of a bridge into a tree, but I'd rather use it as apparatus in an experiment. An experiment that will confirm or shatter some beliefs I have about Minneapolis. I've always known that the neighborhood I live in is pretty pleasant. The level of that pleasantness could never really be quantified... until now. Petty crime is what really gets to people. It wears you down, pisses you off, instills distrust between you and your neighbors. Sad to say but not long after, say, a murder, a neighborhood will recover. But, when you live on a street where plants are getting swiped from your garden, your car radio is getting robbed on an every two or three year basis, your shed is getting broken into you then live in a constant state of apprehension and suspicion and maybe even paranoia. That's Dublin. People here don't believe me when I tell them that if I left a cold, moldy, cup of tea in my front garden back home, that some scumbag would lift it the second my back was turned. The Irish rogue sees all the angles and some times you nearly admire his ability to engineer and execute the theft of objects worth no more than the price of a few pints.
Believing that petty but persistent crime is directly related to quality of life and mental well being I decided to leave my unwanted bike unlocked outside my apartment door just to see what makes the American criminal mind tick and more importantly to see if this neighborhood is as nice as it appears on the surface.
Nearly three months have passed and the bike still stands outside the door. Cobwebs stretch between various parts of the frame and rust is turning once shiny steel to a a dull red-brown color. Grass that couldn't be cut by the lawnmower because of the bike being in the way is starting to weave itself around the wheels.
I'm starting to think that nature will consume the bike before it falls victim to robbery. Conclusion thus: not a bad place to live.
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04 August 2005 -
The empty west
The French and German working man enjoys between four and six weeks of holidays every year of his employed life. His Irish contemporary also fares pretty well having three to four weeks in which to down tools and appreciate life. A week at the Galway races, a break in sunny Spain, many the carefree drunken night over Christmas, a few long weekends messin' around the house. All possible for this man. The American however, he must be satisfied with a meager two work free weeks per year. I now fall into this category, and what a rough deal it is.
I remember being at a job interview about a year ago, not far from here. After meeting with a few engineers I was turned over to HR to learn of what benefits the company could offer a young man like me.
"Lay it on me" I says, and she did. "We'll, you get the healthcare, the dental, subsidized this and co-payed that... and for your first seven years with the company you are entitled to 10 days paid vacation per year." To be honest, I didn't expect any more. The medical and dental plans were very generous. I sat there forcing a smile and returning the enthusiasm that was emanating so strongly from across the table. "10 days? Great!" says I, while secretly and internally saying "screw that, gimme four weeks or you can go to hell with the job." Not the time, place or country for those thoughts of treason. Instead of trying to turn the tide on this foundation of the American working life, as much value as possible must be squeezed from time away from the grindstone. Hence, a five state, 3400 mile, 10 day trek to Montana and back.
On the fourth Friday in July Martha and I headed south on I-35 until it intersected with I-90. It was all west from there on an empty corridor through endless and perfectly geometric fields of soybeans and corn. Thoughts of camp fire cooked corn on the cob doused in butter and salt plagued my rumbling stomach. That’s some good eatin’. The land faded from green to light green with every mile and after crossing the South Dakota border it seemed that a very weak shade of brown was going to be the outcome. Rocks, hills, dust and vast open prairie replaced the crop fields of Minnesota.
We reached Badlands National Park () that afternoon. A strange rocky place that looked and felt like an evaporated ocean floor. After setting up the tent I noticed one of our car tires was slashed. Probably not maliciously since our neighborhood in Minneapolis is pretty quiet, more likely that it somehow happened on route. Given that we were only 700 miles into our trip, with many more to go we decided to get some expert advice. Having recently acquired my US driving license I drove into the town of Wall and found a garage. It was a hot, dry and dusty day. Two dormant looking pumps stood outside the garage. I’m guessing that their fuel prices were no match for the 30 pump gas stations that people can easily access along the highway. If you ever read National Geographic magazine you’ll know about the short section called ZipUSA. It usually focuses on small rural towns. Ordinary people are photographed and offer some stories about the town and their lives. Real down to earth stuff but interesting. The two mechanics who fixed our tire in Wall would make fine material for the magazine. Nothing extraordinary about them. Genuine, hardworking, friendly characters. Behind the oil, dirt, scattered tools and loud air compressor that repeatedly cut in and out this was a solid business built on meticulous work and loyal customers. There’s something reassuring about the honesty of certain people. It’s these experiences that I remember and value most.
Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. We went to bed around 20:30 and woke as the sun was coming up over the jagged horizon. Getting on the road by 07:30 allowed us to reach Devils Tower National Park in Wyoming by early afternoon. Another otherworldly kind of place. Devils Tower () is a bigger version of The Giant’s Causeway back home. Many times bigger. Millions of years ago huge hexagons of igneous material extruded out of the earth stopping at nearly 1300 ft. During the afternoon we hiked around the base of the tower, stopping to gawk and photograph. Plenty of climbers could be seen ascending the vertical rock, each dwarfed by the hexagonal columns they clung to.
This is killing me, trying to find time to sit down and write. There is simply too much to tell and the effort to transcribe my memories can't be summoned now.
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21 July 2005 -
MN, ND, SD, WY, MT
My first ever American road trip begins at 05:00 tomorrow morning. The map below shows the states we will be visiting. Final destination is Glacier National Park, Montana (), a distance of more than 1,200 miles from our Minneapolis home. The Dunne camp is excited, having never been west of this here city. The trip will encompass so much more than our time spent in Montana. On route, we will be camping in the South Dakota Badlands () where I believe the opening sequence of Planet of the Apes was filmed, you know, the scene where Taylor stumbles out of his wrecked spaceship which has crash landed in a surreal desert/lunar type environment. Great movie.
Oh but the movie-locations-coincidentally-coinciding with our mid journey stop points don't end there. No sir. Interstate 90 sweeps into northeastern Wyoming after cutting across South Dakota leaving us close to Devils Tower National Park () where we'll pitch the old tent. Steven Spielberg made this place famous in his movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Not in my top ten films of all time but I'm sure it'll provide good meat for a story and a great photo opportunity.
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14 July 2005 -
Train graffiti
Weather has been hot here lately (). Not hot as in getting roasted so bad that you go into work the next day and people laugh at you because you look like a lobster, nay, a different kind of hot. I go outside to my bike and before even mounting the beast small beads of sweat can be felt upon the brow. Zero exertion necessary. A wall of humidity greets me every time I leave a building. No escaping it.
Oppressive as the weather may be, I don't control it, yet. Most evenings I take a bike ride around the locality and my trusty camera often comes along for the ride.
Minneapolis earned the nick name "Mill City" for agricultural reasons. Historically, grain, soybeans, wheat and a scatter of other crops grown all over the midwest came to Minneapolis by freight train to be milled into flour and other commodities. On a side note, many farmers have now jumped from unprofitable food crop production to growing crops that can be converted to ethanol, an auto fuel additive popular here in Minnesota. Some folk won't risk putting this clean burning fuel in their cars and are often heard to say, "I'm not putting that corn gas in my tank."
It is around this grain/railway infrastructure that I can be found on a sunny evening, riding my bike and taking photos in what must look like some foreign espionage operation. Truth be told, there was a run-in with the Railway Police a few months back. Trespassing was my crime, guilty was my plea. I think the Railway Police are that fake breed of law enforcement though, similar to supermarket security guards. Had they been a force to be reckoned with I would have seen a gun on the officers belt. Instead he asked what I was up to. "Why, just taking some photos officer, nothing more, nothing less." My honesty and acknowledgement of guilt was appreciated.
Something other than the luck o' the Irish allowed me to win the day. He didn't seem like the smartest guy in the world. After listening to my accent as I explained my activities he stopped me and said "Are you French?" They have a phrase for that back home, "Fuckin' eejit."
Some photos () from this evening.
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05 July 2005 -
Feckin' birds
I have a splitting headache that took hold about two hours ago and refuses to shift. A serious neurological condition that is not being helped by what's going on in an Elm tree outside my window. Perched high above the street a big crow is making a long distance call to one of his friends. I can hear the recipient a few blocks away, happily replying with news of what's going on in his life. It's interesting that such small animals can generate so much noise. My crow speaks in bursts of three raspy squawks. The friend or relative waits a few seconds, processing the information, and if this is the early days of a relationship, carefully formulates a response. He then mirrors my crow's call with three identical squawks. A limited but efficient language.
The communication between the two characters is not unlike annoying mobile phone users. Both the crow and the human show complete disregard for others. There is one major difference, I can't figure out what the hell the crow is talking about, though I imagine it to be many times more intriguing than a discussion about what was on TV last night.
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30 June 2005 -
Breakfast
Breakfast is something I have only indulged in since I began working full time. Before that were the college and school years. In those days the morning meal consisted of whatever nutrients I could extract from toothpaste, a few cigarettes and maybe a bar of chocolate, if I was good.
Cereal is what God intended humans to eat in the wee hours. I am sure of this. While working at Nova Science, in Ireland, I was introduced to a brand of cereal whose recipe could only have been concocted by Him. We’re talking about Kellogg’s Just Right… “A sumptuous blend of just the right amount of four natural grains, crunchy nuts and succulent fruit.” I recall one morning in the canteen sitting across from someone slurping up a bowl of Just Right and thought I’d try my hand at a few mouthfuls. Immediate satisfaction was exhibited by making an over joyous horse type sound.
Fast forward to present day life here in America. I’ve searched high and low in countless supermarkets spanning three states. It’s a personal crusade whenever I happen to be in a new part of the country. Never have I once seen the stuff. “Kellogg’s Just Right”, I’ll say to an employee. “Do you have it?” The reply always sounds initially positive. “Oh yeah, I remember that stuff… no, sorry, we don’t sell that anymore.”
In this country you can get everything you don’t need. There used to be a game I’d play. I make up completely absurd products/services and bounce them off Martha, just to test how consumer friendly America really is. 24 hour golf club shops, restaurants dedicated to the provision of one niche food only: pancakes, drive through banks. They all exist.
A shrewd and loyal friend wanting to shed the hassle and expense of a wedding present for the happy couple could always have a few 750g boxes of said cereal shipped over. No pressure.
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23 June 2005 -
Summer has arrived
It's hot, very hot () here at the moment.
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19 June 2005 -
Camping
A three day week is a sweet thing indeed. On Thursday morning, after miserably failing a driving test, Martha, Fro and I drove north for a long weekend of camping.
George H. Crosby Manitou State Park (), or Bill Cosby Park as I call it, lies about 50 miles north of Duluth, Minnesota on the edge of vast Lake Superior. We stopped for lunch in downtown Duluth. A major port city even though on a lake. Northern Minnesota is known as The Iron Range due to the abundance of iron ore in the region. All visible heavy industry in Duluth revolves around ore processing. While driving out of the city I looked up at an overhead railway bridge. It must have been 75ft above road level. As far as the eye could see were a string of identical carriages crawling toward a white smoke belching plant. The scene looked like a rollercoaster ride as it begins its initial journey along the rails.
Lake fronted northeastern Minnesota enjoys a beautiful summer climate compared to landlocked Minneapolis where July/August temperatures can and do reach the high 90's and the parallel insult, humidity, measuring as high. The enormous body of water that is Lake Superior acts as a giant heat sink absorbing the sun's rays. It would take years to heat that quantity of water to even lukewarm, so when a breeze blows off the lake and onto land it is cool and refreshing. As I said, summer in Duluth is sweet but winter is hell with snowfall measured in feet and duration of ground coverage measured in months. That welcome breeze from the lake turns evil making you wish you could crawl into a bears den and sleep it out until spring.
Bill Cosby Park has a population of Black Bears. Although not as big as their grizzly cousins I don’t think I’d like to happen across one while alone at night. The bear presence and our instinct for survival forces us to take certain precautions. All pic-i-nic baskets, food and food waste has to be stored in a bag. The bag is then tied to a rope and pulled up into a tree out of reach from hungry bears. I whipped up a rope system that would shame an above average outdoors man. Patent pending.
As I write this I am sitting on a rock on the edge of the powerful Manitou River that cascades noisily over a rocky river bed diagonally bisecting the park. Silver Birch, Maple, Pine, Cedar and many more tree varieties populate the banks and surrounding woods. Storm felled trees provide all the firewood we could ever need. The trick is getting to the good wood before the ants reduce it to soil. The water is the color of organic apple juice, tinted by the iron in the earth. Protruding rocks provide resistance to the rivers flow and generate plenty of whitewater. I’ve yet to see any brave soul canoe it.
It’s interesting to look around and acknowledge that nothing has ever been changed by people here. The park is managed by the state but the human influence can only be seen in the water pump two miles from our tent and the hole in the ground that serves as the toilet. It’s not your average tents in a field, vending machines everywhere kind of place. There’s no shop, showers, electricity, noise or litter. Each tent is nearly a quarter mile apart. It’s the most cut off from civilization I’ve ever been. We saw no more than 30 people all weekend! The woods are dense and getting lost looks all too easy. Whatever I learned in the scouts wouldn’t be enough to get me out of here alive. The few knots I remembered came in useful though.
Late evening is fire time. Fro chops wood and builds a fire. The fire must be enjoyed without its liquid partner, beer. Not an option this weekend. Beer is heavy and we have too much already to haul from the car to the tent, a journey of over two miles through woods and fast changing topography. Another factor is that all rubbish must be taken home. It’s all fun and games when drunk around a warm fire, but transporting a scatter of empty but heavy bottles back to the Honda is not my idea of a good time. If I was fond of the hard stuff a half bottle of whisky could be accommodated, but I’m not, so I’ll have to rely on sobriety and the sound of the rushing Manitou River to put me to sleep. Life could be much worse.
I made friends with this () guy.
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30 May 2005 -
Wisconsin
On Friday we pointed the car toward Wisconsin to spend the long weekend with Martha's family. Traffic was light and we made good time, reaching a sleeping Waupaca well before midnight. The desire to go out and hit the bottle at that time of night is decreasing with age and knowing that a good hangover will ruin an entire weekend we went to bed.
Outdoor shenanigans began early on Saturday. Fran offered the option of physical labor on his land and I accepted. One pile of wood was broken down into three piles. Usable construction timber, burnable firewood, dead wood with no other use than to be thrown on top of a new pile dedicated to decaying branches, leaves and other tree matter. A man with piles. Some two hours later Martha and Marci arrived on the scene with supplies of Heineken and cheese sandwiches.
Good weather is never to be wasted. Later that same day we set fire () to a bunch of wood, had more beer and began to wish that we brought tents. Looking up at the stars and enjoying the warm crackling fire Fran summed up life at that point in time: "eat food, drink beer, burn wood."
The rural night sky is as black as coal and millions of stars are visible. What appears to be thin dusty clouds is actually the Milky Way galaxy, our home. Beer and stars, makes you think. Good times.
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21 May 2005 -
Another cool weekend
On Friday night we went over to Nate and Fro's house. They live in northeast Minneapolis, a part of the city that I hope to call home sometime next year. My crude words or photos will never be able to describe how fantastic an area it is. Giant trees hang low over the pleasant streets, strange and interesting shops can be found on Central avenue, amazing old industrial buildings are as numerous as houses, a constant stream of slow moving freight trains bisects the neighborhoods with their horns blasting loudly all day and all night. Soon after we arrived the outdoor fire was set up. We gathered round () and had a few laughs.
The third weekend in May of every year is when Art-A-Whirl () goes down in northeast Minneapolis. It is an open studio and gallery tour where hundreds of artists throw open their doors and display their works. There is more going on in this city that I ever knew. We spent all day Saturday and most of Sunday moving from one gallery to another. They were in breweries, on boats, in warehouses and in private homes. We saw art that was great and not so great and we ate as much free food as we could without being too obvious, even though stuffing ones pockets with handfuls of pretzels is quite a visible act. No shame.
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08 May 2005 -
Seating rules
Last night we had a few at Keegan's. Pretty authentic Irish pub. The drinks are expensive and the music is too loud. On our table Martha noticed a small sign that said "This table is reserved for a minimum of 3 people." The sign was obviously meant to deter people from hogging too many seats, seats that could be utilized by a greater number of patrons.
"But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence..."
I had a black marker in my pocket and offered it to Martha so that the sign could be doctored. The 3 was quickly changed to an 8 and the sign was put on the table next to us. No sooner had the sign been placed on the table than in the door walked a group of three men. They made their way over to the free table but upon noticing the new seating restrictions made a u-turn and chose a different place to sit.
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01 May 2005 -
Game on
There'll be wedding bells in June 2006.
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30 April 2005 -
Fire
Last night I was party to a back garden science experiment. We were over at Fro and Nate's house enjoying a fire they had on their patio. The smell of burning wood, the sight of flames leaping toward the dark sky and a few bottles of beer is the perfect way to spend an evening. But where there's fire there's messin'. Various objects were lobbed into the fire and turned to ash. Then somebody tossed a beer bottle into the flames. We watched the bottle slowly begin to glow, taking on an orange lava type color. Slowly but surely the glass reached its "softening point."
Softening point: The temperature at which glass will deform under its own weight.
We watched in drunken fascination as the bottle sagged and folded over on itself. When taken out of the fire on the end of a stick it quickly cooled and became brittle. End of experiment, end of story.
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17 April 2005 -
Down at the train tracks
This weekend was mostly spent outdoors since the weather was so feckin' beautiful. We peddled all over the place enjoying the sights and sounds of a city that continues to reveal new sides all the time. An opportunity presented itself to cross another All-American activity off the list. I've been to a baseball game, I've eaten hot dogs, I've been to rummage sales, I've tasted (and spat out) root beer... and now I can say that I've gone down to the train tracks and crushed coins. Cycling along Energy Park Drive I happened upon some suitable tracks. Knowing that freight trains run quite frequently on this line I laid a quarter on the rail. I sat patiently in the hot sun and waited for a train to flatten my money. Thirty minutes later and still no train so I set off on the bike but left the money in place. Almost as soon as I cycled off a train blasted past me so I turned the beast around and returned to the scene of the crime. And there she was, flat as a pancake and smooth as if she had been polished. Wish I had of witnessed the action. Next time.
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02 April 2005 -
Walking project
A friend of mine back home is undertaking a masters degree in digital art and technology. Martha and I participated in a project for him today. It was a walking project and involved us downloading 25 audio instructions that we put on my ipod and randomized. Then every three minutes we are told either to go left, right, back, forward... you get the idea. During each three minute track we are obliged to make some sort of visual or textual recording of anything that interests us along the way.
Initial skepticism on my part gave way to pure enjoyment as we were forced to interact with the city in a controlled fashion. It was interesting to come across so many intriguing people and situations that would have remained otherwise hidden from our lives had we received a different instruction that led us down another street. I frequently give up on this city and proclaim that there is no good stuff in it, but I am usually proven wrong and this project confirmed that. Simply kicking back and waiting for a city to come knocking on your door with a list of fun activities is not going to happen. Seems to be a two way process.
We picked Central avenue in northeast Minneapolis as a good starting point. It's a higher end of the low income bracket blue collar type of neighborhood. There are freight trains running through the area, beautiful old warehouse buildings, a strong Russian and eastern European presence, plenty of hardware shops. It feels like a real community, the type of existence where you could go next door to borrow a shovel, be offered a cold beer and then spend hours talking about nothing in particular. And what's wrong with that? Absolutely nothing. It's got that very, very tiny hint of danger but overall is just full of normal people doing normal and abnormal stuff.
Some of the fun and peculiar happenings we experienced:
During the first few minutes of the project we were instructed to make a left, so we did. We walked by a funeral home. There was a ladder leaning against a wall right under an open window. A man in his late seventies and wearing a tailored suit was trying to get out the window. Why? We joked that he was assumed dead and thrown into the pine box only to awaken, break out of the coffin and then escape the funeral home to go and avenge his non-death.
The walking continued, sometimes doubling back on itself due to the random order of the audio instructions. We made our way up a steep hill of a street. Again, a ladder plays an important part in this tale. We came across a man in his early thirties carefully descending a ladder. In his right hand was a small cage containing a frantic squirrel. At home squirrels are happy-go-lucky characters who enjoy public affection. Over here they are as populous and as troublesome as rats. They have a habit of making a home for themselves in every available wall cavity of a house. Imagine the noise and the smell? Martha asked the guy could she take his picture and I inquired about the fate of the caged squirrel. The man replied, with a dry smile on his face "probably gonna put him out of his misery."
On we went, enjoying more and more this part of the city. Nice location for a future home? We came upon an elderly couple sitting in their front garden on neon plastic chairs. The man had a big spongy booze nose and was smoking the stub of a fat cigar. They were just sitting there enjoying the fine Spring weather. We asked could we photograph them. The man was into the idea. His wife was slightly nervous. He spoke for her and we took a few shots anyway. Nice folks.
Maybe a half hour later we came to a four way intersection. There was a church on one corner, houses on two other corners and some small commercial but out of business building on the remaining corner. In front of this was an old Ford pickup truck. Three men were standing around the truck. They saw us across the road with the cameras and started shouting over "hey, take our picture!" We crossed the road and a had a chat. They told us to title the photo "Three Guys Looking for Work."
I enjoyed the forced interaction between us, other people, locations, time. I suppose I could try and think about it in more detail but it was just simply a good time.
The result () of Emmet's toil.
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30 March 2005 -
Eulogy to Bob
The family dog back home passed away yesterday after a long battle with cancer. Everyone who ever had a dog will always say that their mut was the best in the world. I know that our dog was far from perfect and that's what made him great. He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, he was the worst possible watchdog, he always slept on the job, he begged profusely, he stole food, he crawled into unreachable holes and ripped your favorite socks to bits. He had few tricks to his name. Ask him to roll over and he would look at you with a face of absolute stupidity. He didn't understand the game where the owner throws a stick or ball and the loyal hound retrieves the object so it can be thrown again. He survived a kidnapping in 1996. He was gay for about a two year period. He fancied himself as a ladies man but I never actually witnessed him hooking up. He sometimes went missing but always showed up many hours later contently sitting outside the front door of the house as we pulled into the drive. He liked to chase pigeons. I was always impressed with the tiger like approach he used when trying to catch one of these rat-birds. He would drop real low and slink slowly toward the birds. Inevitably they got away every time. The list goes on and on. I'll continue to enjoy the memories for many years to come.
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28 March 2005 -
La dolce vita
Cup o' tea and a Cadbury's Crunchie: champagne and caviar of the workin' man.
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26 March 2005 -
Machines
We went exploring today and came across () some old machines.
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19 March 2005 -
John Law
We had a run-in with the police last night. Nothing as dramatic as one might see on an episode of COPS but that's probably a good thing. Yesterday was Kelley's birthday. We had a party in the apartment. A very respectable and well behaved crowd enjoyed a moderate dose of booze and decent helping of light snacks. The Americans have manners. No doubt about that. Such a contrast to some of the parties I have been to back home where peoples CD's end up in the microwave, amateur stuntmen cycle bikes down flights of stairs, stuff gets stolen, stuff gets smashed to smithereens, furniture gets burned. Of course, this is hilarious when it's someone else's property being destroyed.
The music, drinking and casual but friendly mingling continued past midnight. Around 01:15 two of Minneapolis's finest literally strolled into the kitchen. The people living below our apartment, who are younger than us and at home asleep on a Friday night, had called the police to complain about the noise. You'd think it would be easier to knock on our door and ask us to turn down the music. Obviously not. The two cops were clearly quite confused by the reason for the call. They were probably expecting a bunch of wild naked lunatics to be dancing around the place and snorting cocaine off a toilet seat. They apologized for disturbing us. That's right, they were sorry for interrupting our well behaved party.
My spidey senses tell me that the hostility between the neighbors and ourselves will escalate. I've already traded harsh words with one of the whistle blowers. I am quite content to let it be a long, drawn out, petty and devious campaign of revenge and reprisal.
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12 March 2005 -
Deals a plenty
I got a real taste of the America everyone loves to hate today, and I liked it. Kelley and I went to an outlet mall in Albertville, located about 30 miles from our apartment. An outlet mall is basically an architecturally criminal bunch of buildings that house name brand stores like Nike, Calvin Klein, Benetton... selling their wares at rock bottom prices. They're literally giving the shit away. To get there you have to travel beyond the seemingly endless suburban sprawl. Yes, it does end somewhere and fertile farmland survives beyond that point. Not for long. There is no shortage of space in this country and therefore no plans to slow the pace at which cities and suburbs spill out from their points of origin while devouring more and more green fields. The big cities are quite densely populated but go west and you'll see that even the poorest of people live in dwellings that enjoy a footprint much greater than their equally worse off European counterparts.
The outlet mall. It's ugly. It's soulless. It's full of annoying people, but my god it's good value. One pair of Levis, one pair of jeans from the Gap, a shirt and jumper/sweater from Benetton, another jumper/sweater this time from Old Navy, and about three other items since forgotten. How much? About $100.
I remember times at home going into town with a hard earned £100 in my pocket and hoping to exchange this for a pair of jeans and maybe a shirt or two, if I was lucky. What a fool I was.
The sweetness of a good deal is one of life's many pleasures.
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07 March 2005 -
Clichés
I've heard many clichéd statements in my time, such as when playing Monoploy and someone will think it very original to say "Imagine this was real money?"
Irish people will be very familiar with what gets said when enjoying a Cadbury's Creme Egg around Easter time. It is customary to proclaim "Imagine you could get an easter egg that was actually a massive Creme Egg?" Sure, it would be great to be able to buy such an Easter egg.
As nice as that would be it would probably cause death. I came across a site recently where some guy took matters into his own hands and made his own monster egg.
Check it () out.
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04 March 2005 -
The Miser's Gold
I counted the contents of my spare change jar this evening, or my holiday jar as it has become known. Martha and I, and maybe some other good folks, will be heading to Glacier National Park, Montana this summer. Around that time the coins from this very jar will be converted into a nice wad of notes. Soon after, these very same notes will be bartered for petroleum distillate that will propel our vehicle west. And what of the dirty jar and its worth? $160 at latest count. Sweet.
Counting my change coin by filthy coin brought to mind a story we learned at school a long time ago, "The Miser's Gold". The miser was an old guy who lived alone in a dilapidated old house. He spent every night repetitively counting his stacks of coins by candlelight. The old bastard was too tight to splash out on a few 60W bulbs. Of course, this was a children's story and through colorful illustrations and simple mental imagery we were persuaded to agree with the futility of greed and understand its effects. My cynical adult mind has been thinking about the tale of the miser and has come to the conclusion that he was not the smartest economist after all. Surely if he had of taken his money to a bank offering competitive rates of interests on savings accounts they would have been happy to nurture his fortune. Likewise, if he had of maintained his house thereby keeping its market value steady he may have been able to live a less frugal and more enjoyable life.
Someone really needs to write a sequel.
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25 February 2005 -
Nine
Nine () wee photos.
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21 February 2005 -
The Windy City
Went to The Windy City (a.k.a. Chicago) this weekend. I am certain that I could be extremely content living there.
When one visits a city with a population of 8,272,768, one of the top five tallest buildings in the world and is next to a lake that is actually bigger than Ireland one should attempt to capture these wonders on camera. As you can see (), I have failed miserably to do so.
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08 February 2005 -
Pancake Tuesday
Today the world celebrated Pancake Tuesday. Martha was kind enough to organize the cooking of the pancakes. She used soy milk, which was a potential argument starter, but in truth yielded pancakes that were above par.
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22 January 2005 -
Messin' in the snow
Last night was no typical Friday night "down the pub". Snow fell heavily during the day. I would hazard a guess at 12 inches in less than eight hours. That's enough to draw some cities to a complete standstill. Not this city though. The snow plows were out in force followed directly by the salt trucks.
I arrived home much later than normal but in a good mood. A few inches of snow blanketing everything in sight has the power to make you forget about any other crap swirling around in your head. I asked the room-mates what the plan for the evening entailed. The reply: sledding, or flying down steep snow covered hills on a plastic dish shaped object as I like to call it.
We drove a few miles to the park with the good hills. Naturally, we brought some booze to quench the thirst developed from running back up the slopes to repeat the sledding process. One friend brought a bottle of Jameson. I stuck with the beer. Probably not as good at warming your internal organs though.
Martha lost the car keys in the snow. The next time we see them will be when the snow melts in April. I was having too much fun to get stressed out about the loss of a bunch of metal. Up and down the hills we flew. The impact of the hard frozen earth on my arse was felt more and more as we sledded down the same run. The maiden voyage on virgin snow is pretty cloud like. I imagine that more of this great winter activity will be enjoyed as the snow continues to fall.
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02 January 2005 -
Christmas in Wisconsin
The Dunne family was in town for the Christmas holidays. They brought with them many foods unique to the old country.
There's nothing like the aroma experienced while picking ones nose after using the same hand to eat a bag of Tayto cheese and onion crisps.
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14 December 2004 -
Up north
Martha has a friend, Jason. He turned 25 last week. He lives in a town of 75 people called Isabella, located in the North Woods of this state, less than 100 miles from the Canadian border. Myself and a large group of Martha's friends traveled north on Saturday morning. Snowfall was promised. There is no snow yet in Minneapolis. Plenty of ice and freezing rain though.
Towns get smaller and farther apart as you follow Lake Superior northwards. The temperature drops too, as do property prices. One could acquire a decent enough abode with a few acres of woods for less than $50,000. Sounds great, but what does one do for work? I'm not cut out for the logging or mining game so I'll continue to be tied to the big city for now. If you were a musician or furniture maker or something like that, then an existence in this setting would be quite possible. Nice.
We drove through Duluth, a university town of about 80,000 people. Lots of smoke stacks and heavy industry, namely Taconite mining and processing. Very nicely located on the shores of Lake Superior. I would imagine it is a great place to be in the summer months. Duluth had seen some snowfall in the last few days. No more than a few inches though.
Further north we drove. Towns and civilization disappeared almost completely. Pine trees were all that could be seen. Millions and millions of them covered every scrap of land. I would have liked to get out of the car and enjoyed the silence for a while. When I get my own automobile in a few weeks I plan to do many things like that.
We arrived in Isabella around 18:00. Here is the lowdown on the town: a few houses and one building that encompasses a restaurant, bar, liquor store, gas station and a motel. Kind of like at home, you know, the pub/shop/funeral-home one stop shop.
We convened on Jason's place of work and location of his birthday party: the restaurant, bar, liquor store... It was plain that this was going to be one serious redneck night out. On the wall hung many a dead and stuffed animal. At the bar sat many the silent and drunken man. Not much talk going on between anyone. The country and western music played loudly. We were of interest to the entire establishment because of where we had come from, the big city. Even thought this place was small and not as fast paced as Minneapolis, or even Navan for that matter, it was packed with interesting people that told me some of the best stories ever. I talked to guys who had been in World War II. I talked to guys who had never heard of Ireland. I watched men in their 60's eat vodka jelly shots with tea spoons. I watched the entire town get hammered and enjoy life.
I was shown photos of some local guys and a moose they had shot and then cut up for meat. The head alone nearly took up the entire back of the pickup truck in the photo and the man who shot it told me he culled nearly 700lbs of meat from that one animal. I didn't take kindly to the picture he showed me of the black bears they had killed. If there is meat on it, it gets shot. Pretty basic stuff. Four legs bad, two legs good.
It was hard to get drunk with the amount of crazy stuff that was stimulating me. Yes, sweet sweet drunkenness eluded me but enabled me to take away plenty of memories.
We went back to Jason's house sometime after midnight. Some of the braver guests took off the majority of their clothes and partook in the age old tradition of "rolling in the snow". Maybe next year. It looked painful but also one of those things I wish I had of done. Regrets, I have a few.
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10 December 2004 -
Smoking
Three years ago today I stopped smoking. God I'm great. Here are the numbers:
12
Average number of cigarettes I used to smoke every day.
12 x 365 x 3 = 13,140
Number of cigarettes not smoked in the last three years.
100mm
Approximate length of one cigarette.
13,140 x 100mm = 1314m (nearly one mile)
Total length of cigarettes not smoked layed end to end.
Don't forget all the money that was saved, and subsequently wasted on other vices.
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04 December 2004 -
Mystery night
Friday night has become mystery night here. We pick a bar that none of us have ever been to before and then go there in search of new adventures. It usually works out quite well. We meet new people, sample new drinks, use new and strange bathrooms.
Last night we decided on a bar called The Starlite Lounge. We strolled in the door and took a right and landed in a room that had candle lit tables, nice comfortable seats, a projector beaming videos onto the wall and a cool dance floor with small lights embedded into it. The DJ was playing some Pet Shop Boys song, which was then followed by a George Michael song and then Elton John continued the theme. At this point we were the only people there. Some time later a group of four well dressed gentlemen arrived, and then a group of about six guys, then a guy on his own, then another bunch of lads. If my objective had been to try and meet some ladies then I was quite obviously in the wrong pub. Maybe an hour later, this guy walks in wearing only a pair of jeans. Nothing else at all. He jumped up on this pedestal thing that was literally 2ft away from us and started to dance. Then another guy (less clothes that the first dancer) jumped onto another pedestal and strutted his stuff. The table next to us had emptied their wallets of $1 bills and stacked them on the table. I gather they were going to use them in a strip club kind of way.
We felt more and more out of place as time went on. It's not that we were uncomfortable though, the drinks had helped out with any insecurity we might be feeling. We just couldn't stop laughing at the way the entire time we were there little things kept happening that made us stand out from everyone else. By the time we left it was entirely obvious to everyone that we did not know what kind of bar this was. Someone told me that the waiters were taking bets on when we would leave.
To make a long story short, it was a fantastic night and I look forward to what the next mystery night will bring.
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29 November 2004 -
Thanksgiving
Went to Waupaca, Wisconsin last Thursday for Thanksgiving weekend. Thanksgiving also marks the final days of the deer hunting season. As such the fields and woods were full of guys (and some ladies) with their guns. Although I have no problem with this pastime I was annoyed that the great outdoors were off limits to me. The highway that took us to Wisconsin was adorned on either side by deer that had been hit by cars. Some of them looked like they were simply asleep while others had been cut in half by bigger vehicles. The thought of free venison was always on my mind.
Thanksgiving is probably as big a holiday as Christmas. And because of this we were treated to a banquet. Martha's family went all out. The turkey was cooked on the barbeque and was absolute perfection. I learned that meals that look and taste great are not necessarily hard to accomplish. A kitchen timer is an invaluable tool to the chef. Which reminds me, I cooked my first ever ham a few weeks ago. I'm in the big leagues now.
Rain was ever present over the weekend and when coupled with the danger of death by gunshot it made for a lot of time spent indoors. We played Scrabble on Saturday night. I enjoyed my finest hour. On one turn I managed to mop up 56 points by only using one letter. Triple word scores and double letter scores played to my advantage. I lost the game soon after.
Now that I think of it, the weekend was a very athletic one. I played pool, Scrabble, I bowled and on Thursday afternoon I played horseshoes in the garden. Oh, and I did some driving, which is also a sport. All that makes for quite the pentathlon.
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21 November 2004 -
A few scoops
Went for a few last night. Good laugh. The bar we went to was near a factory that makes fortune cookies. Someone said that there is a notice on the front door of the building that says "Don't ask about employment". Apparently people keep going in and asking can they work as the person that writes the fortunes.
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18 November 2004 -
Skinner (SS) & Chalmers (SC)
SC - "Well Seymour, I made it, despite your directions."
SS - "I hope you're ready for mouth watering hamburgers!"
SC - "I thought we were having steamed clams?"
SS - "Oh no no, I said steamed hams. That's what I call hamburgers."
SC - "You call hamburgers steamed hams?"
SS - "Yes. It's a regional dialogue."
SC - "Uh...what region?"
SS - "Uuuh. Upstate New York."
SC - "Really? Well I'm from Ithaca and I've never heard anyone use the phrase steamed hams."
SS - "Oh not in Utica, no, it's an Albany expression."
SC - "Uh I see. You know these hamburgers are quite similar to the ones they have at Krusty Burgers."
SS - "Hohohoho. No. Patented Skinner Burgers. Old family recipie."
SC - "For...steamed hams."
SS - "Yes."
SC - "Yes, and you call them steamed hams despite the fact they are obviously grilled."
SS - "You know I...One thing I sh...Excuse me for one second. Well, that was wonderful. A good time was had by all. I'm pooped."
SC - "Yes, I should be...Good lord, what is happening in there?"
SS - "Aurora Borealis?"
SC - "Aurora Borealis? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?"
SS - "Yes."
SC - "May I see it?"
SS - "No."
SC - "Well, Seymour, you are an odd fellow, but I must say you steam a good ham."
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15 November 2004 -
How do you like them apples?
Went to the supermarket tonight. Me and Martha saw the deal of the century, a bag of apples for $1.59. Too good to be true? Yes. Grabbed two bags, ended up paying $14 for the them. Turns out the deal was priced per weight and the apples just happened to be in bags. They better be the best dam apples in America.
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11 November 2004 -
Tea
Drinking an aul cup of tay here. Jaysus, the stuff is hard to beat. I am used to the milk here now so it is no longer a cup of skanky shite that I am forced to drink. My taste buds have assimilated completely to local dairy products.
Nowt to report really. Made a website for my company, not exactly ground breaking stuff but it's a start and will be built upon. Have a look ().
It's supposed to snow this week. I'd better rake the last of the leaves in the garden or else they will rot under the snow, until it melts, in April 2005. Seriously.
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07 November 2004 -
Trespassing
Did some more trespassing today, down at the train yards near our house. Beautiful weather, beautiful day, nobody to be seen for about a two mile radius. Just me and the trains.
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06 November 2004 -
Pints
I had big plans for today. They involved building a bench that will allow me to launch my woodwork career. Didn't materialize. Instead I went for a few afternoon drinks. The second bar we went to was a VFW bar. That stands for Veterans of Foreign Wars. Early afternoon and the place was full of guys in their 60's and their wives. Tough men who could probably tell a tale or two. Everyone was wearing white socks and trucker hats. What the hell is with that?
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30 October 2004 -
Halloween
Halloween is pretty big here. Not as big as Christmas or Thanksgiving but it's definitely up there with Ash Wednesday and Pancake Tuesday. We were invited over to a friends house last night to carve pumpkins and have a laugh. I'd never done this before but it basically involves making an opening in the top and scooping the guts out of it. It's kind of similar to removing the contents of a person's head in some mad cult ritual. Most of the pumpkin brains can be put to use in recipes. We took the hundreds of seeds and roasted them in the oven. They kind of taste like popcorn. Beautiful.
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24 October 2004 -
Snippets
Instead of telling long narratives about the week that was, here are some things that I experienced this week.
I was in the Korean part of the city yesterday and saw a tailor's shop that had the following sign outside "extra short men's suits". I know where I'm going if I need a suit.
There was some crazy guy wandering the streets today. He asked some old lady could he have a hug, then he asked us why we didn't have $30m dollars. Only in America.
A guy got shot and killed only five blocks from our house last week. You can see bullet holes in the wall of a hotel nearby.
Ian McNulty used the funniest phrase ever in an email to me: "as busy as a Corinthian's letter box".
I read a nice quote that brought a few tears to my Irish eyes: "I returned to Ireland. Ireland green and chaste and foolish. And when I wandered over my own hills and talked again to my own people I looked into the heart of this life and saw that it was good". Patrick Kavanagh, The Green Fool. I have no desire to jump ship here yet but just thought that this was great writing.
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17 October 2004 -
Apple pie
Martha and Kelley are having their "First Annual Bake Off" right now. They each baked an apple pie and various friends are consuming the pies and rating them accordingly. There is heated rivalry between the two cooks and fear in those eating the pies. If they say they like one pie more than the other then there could be problems.
We had a good weekend. There was bowling on Saturday night, at the Stardust Lanes of course. Not as much fun as the first time I was there but I did manage to score 190 points in the first game. Kudos to me.
The weather is changing fast and it is hovering around 0°C at the moment. It can only get colder from now on. Bring on the snow.
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13 October 2004 -
Cooking
All my cooking life I have ignored the instructions on packets. The results have been true bachelor fare. I get lucky on occasion and produce a meal that is worthy of a king. Today I decided that I would reference one of Martha's many cookery books and have a go at making rice. The old approach was to lash a few fistfuls of the stuff into a pot and boil the shite out of it for 15 minutes. Oh how wrong I have been. By following the recipe today I produced rice that one would expect in a decent restaurant. Fair play to me.
In other news, the job is going great and I am learning loads. The commute is a bit of a headache but I hope to save up enough cash to buy a car or a donkey at least. The one good thing about bus riding is that it is guaranteed free time to read/write/listen to music/plot certain deeds, etc.
I made up a joke today, possibly insensitive but I'll take my chances. Here goes. Did you hear about Superman dying? Yeah, apparently it was Kryptonite related. Ha ha ha.
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09 October 2004 -
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