A Secretly Fun City

A lot has happened since I last wrote. Ive finally managed to get the heck out of Ann Arbor, which, as lovely as it is, was driving me bonkers. I went to China (again). My parents have returned to the US of A, which means no more China for me anytime soon. Sadness.

I've made some strange major life decisions.

I went to a party.

I made bread from scratch.

Ive also decided that as much as I love and covet the 76 Pontiac Trans Am, I find the 63 Corvette Stingray to be justslightly sexier.

Anyway, the Bearded Man and I went down to Pittsburgh for a final hurrah before we peaced the heck out of the Midwest. People (coworkers) talk a fair amount of smack about Pittsburgh and cant seem to see why I would want to go there. Honestly, its a gas. Ive always had a great time there, ate some amazing food, and really enjoyed the city. Ive also pretty much never taken photos there because I'm having too good of a time. They should change their city slogan to "Pittsburgh: Way More Fun Than You Thought".

This most recent trip was at the very beginning of August. It was super hot.
We met up with A&A, who, as Ive mentioned before, might be the best people Ive ever met.
Ever.

We also spontaneously went to a classic car show.

I really should have been born a boy. Not that I'm complaining, mind, but I like cars and tools and building things and dirt and stuff...

Yeah. Ugh.

Anyway, I loved some of the more unusual hood ornaments- I think the ram might be my favorite. Sorry I didn't note exactly the year and make of each car, I was distracted by the shiny glittering lights...









This car was particularly awesome..
It was, I believe a 1939 Dusenberg, and was built entirely by hand by the guy who brought it to the show (Homeboy was rather elderly at this stage, but still so proud of this awesome car) .
Apparently if you wanted one, you just ordered the set of specs and fabricated everything yourself.
Baller.
















That's it for now. More fun still to come. Maybe more posts, who knows? Id like to make something of this little slice of technology, but its impossible to do everything.

If anyone has a old crappy Trans Am sitting in their garage or backyard or something that they want to give me, hit me up. Ill bake you a pie.

Everlasting Light

The Sun when there is none...

I'm rather obsessed with a band called The Black Keys right now...
Check 'em out if you (like me) have no idea whats going on in popular music and need something good to listen to.

Anyway...here's some much belated pictures from fall and Halloween.
Did you all have a good time?
I didn't dress up- for the first time in pretty much my whole short life.
I cant remember, but I think I had to work that day, or something boring like that.
I'm becoming such an adult. *sigh*

Fall was lovely in Ann Arbor.




This church makes me want to go to church.
But I don't think I'd like it once I got in there....
What with the Hound of God and all.




Went out to visit my friend Jack, who lives on a lake and has two silly dogs that are just gluttons for attention, which I was more than happy to lavish on them. We sat in the boat on the lake an watched the sunset, but, hilariously, didn't take the boat out onto the lake and instead, just left it tied up at the dock...




Railroad...somewhere...
I take lots of pictures of railroads.
I like the promise of them going somewhere...


Beardy Man and I went to an apple orchard because I wanted to pick apples.
Sadly, the apples were mostly done for the season, but there were pumpkins.
Here is the Pumpking, resplendent in his royal crown.


A few apples left!


A beautiful day...


Milkweed.


Artsy fartsy pumpkin pictures




This is not the same picture as before, I promise...










And as my first act as Pumqueen, I decree that fall shall last forever...


We bought pumpkins, I made pumpkin-walnut bread with cayenne pepper in it.
yum yum tasty noms gud...


For Halloween, we didn't dress up, nor did we get any trick-or-treaters.
We did carve pumpkins, though.


Here was my awesome fancy-pants pumpkin design that I was going to enter into a competition but apparently missed the entry deadline because I was so busy carving it, so I just took pictures of it instead.


Its supposed to be trees and the moon, I guess...


Goofy psychotic face with crazy eyebrows.


ooooo...spooky!
The teeth looked super cool in the candlelight.


Bwahahahaha!


Good thing I'm posting this after New Years, when its really relevant...
Haha, I sort of suck at being timely.
Anyway, I'm working on some photos from Christmas and general winter shots, so yeah. Check back soon. Really.
Hope you all are well.

Blasts from the Past

Here is a bizarre and totally random selection of pictures I took more than a year ago. I was busy working on some new, recent photos and got bored and instead decided to take a little trip through the archives to see what I could rustle up.
The results were..interesting...to be sure, but in general a positive experience...for me, anyway.

These are taken on all sorts of cameras, in all sorts of places, at all sorts of times of year and stages in my life. The one thing they all have in common is that they are all taken by me, and I guess I like most of them. They arent necessarily good, but that, of course, is rarely the point.

I'll probably write a little snippet about the photo, etc, because this is a blog where I talk about myself, and I like to do that.


This one was taken on the side of the road at a gas station in Utah, maybe, on the way down from Portland to Arizona in January of hmm...2006? It was taken, I believe, with my really really old Kodak that was still film based... Man, I wonder what happened to that thing?
That camera was so cool..it had this flip up thing that went over the 'lens', no settings at all, always used flash, and took decent photos.
Anyway, this has not been edited at all, and I really like it even though it was totally by chance..


The next three shots are all of slot canyons in Escalante National Monument in Utah, during my Epic Road Trip of 2007. Again, old Kodak, I think, and not retouched at all...






I love this next picture because it cracks me up. It depicts my friends Kira and Callie in a van during the road trip, and Callie, the Motherly One, is using tweezers to extract a cactus prickle from the roof of Kira's mouth, because Kira (the Adventurous One) decided to eat Prickly Pear pears somewhere on a dirt road outside of Strawberry Arizona...


I love the overzealous textural editing here...done just for fun. Ok, this one isn't taken by me, but it was with my camera. My friend Dan and I are reenacting "half of Abbey Road", or at least, that was Dan's intention. It doesn't look anything like Abbey Road to me, but I've never really been a Beatles person, so I'm not offended.


This one is Callie (from above), enjoying a lovely, stormy day on the Oregon Coast. This is when I did editing in Illustrator. "lol".
It makes me smile because Callie hikes with an umbrella more often than is normal...


A terrible blown out photo of the Colombia River Gorge, from almost the top of Hamilton Mountain. How I miss you, Oregon.


These are taken in Madurai, India in 2008 (I think). This was my first rickshaw ride in India, and I feel like this picture sums up the experience perfectly. It was wild and fast and very intense...Riding around at breakneck speed in this little open air cab thing on the back of a moped driven by a crazy Indian man with no traffic laws...


Also in Madurai, in some old palace. I love the colorful girls at the base. This isn't retouched at all, and I still like it...


Sometime a few years ago, a late night trip to the grocery store. This is a friend of mine holding "twenty bananas" after I had told him that if you eat twenty bananas, you'll apparently die from a potassium overdose. I have no idea if its true, or if he really has twenty bananas in his arms. All I know is, I really hate bananas and this pictures cracks me up.


Back on the Epic Road Trip. This is a terrible picture of me, and I love it, because this is taken 30 seconds after I made it to the rim of the Grand Canyon after hiking in and out in two days.
And I am triumphant.

I am also wearing my Explorer Shorts, which is most likely the only reason I made it out alive.
Early August, 2007.


Taken in early December of 2008. I borrowed the Architecture School's DSLR and took it out for a spin. I wasn't overly impressed at first but with a little work, came to really love the thing.
Now if only I could afford my own...




The same camera, several months later. Taken on top of an abandoned McDonald's restaurant in Sandusky Ohio. I was tired of sitting in a hotel room and set out to explore instead.
Taken with a Canon EOS30D.




Also Sandusky Ohio, also an abandoned building, but this one is a farmhouse on Kelley's Island in Lake Erie.


A parking structure, empty.


Back in Ann Arbor, a building in passing.


Bicycles on the front porch of Valhalla, my house several years ago.


That appears to be all I've set aside for now.

I'm working on some pictures from the end of October, gearing up for the cold season and generally cooking too many things with pumpkin. Seriously...too much pumpkin.

It might snow tomorrow. eeeek! I'm not ready!
Really, though, I'm never ready.