Category: life

New Bicycle

2010 Marin Hamilton 29er
2010 Marin Hamilton 29er

Last week my bicycle was stolen from my workplace’s parking lot. It was locked to a bike rack with four or five other bicycles. The other bicycles had u-locks mine had a combination cable lock on it. At the end of the day their bikes were still there and mine was gone. Luckily, the bike that was stolen my wife picked up for $20 at a garage sale in Santa Cruz so, it wasn’t a large financial loss. It was a nice bike though and its theft meant I’d have to find a replacement, during my work’s busiest time of the year, because I use the bike to commute to and from work.

I did some looking on Craigslist and made some calls but nothing really clicked. So, last weekend I went to a local bike shop that had some sales. The bicycle pictured above, aMarin Hamiltion 29er, was on sale and I didn’t want to spend all day or weekend looking for other/better deals so I sprang and made the purchase. While there I also picked up a new lock:

square chainlink wrapped in kevlar

I’m told bolt cutters will not work on this at all. I’m hoping this is a big enough deterrent to keep opportunistic criminals from the bike. I’m not taking any chances though when it comes to leaving the bike out for multiple hours with no eyes on it. So, for now I’ll be taking the bike up to the office with me until I can get a spot in the bike cage over at the Capitol that has camera monitoring (there’s a waiting list…) Hopefully, this way the bike won’t be stolen for many years to come after I’ve wrung all the value out of it.

Now, for some more gratuitous shots of my new bicycle (GO, GO, Go Consumerism!)

Single gear, not a "fixie" (though I do have that option...)

 

 

This picture offers contributes nothing. I took it though, and by God I'm going to use it in this post

Maybe, I’ll have time over the coming weekend to write (I really want to tell you about my upcoming Let’s Play and other stuff.)

 

2011 Goals: Half-year Review

What does this have to do with New Year's resolutions? Not much...

So, at the end of last year I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish in 2011, you can find that list here, or you can just continue reading as I’m going to be self-evaluating how well I’ve done accomplishing the items on the list here.

Here’s the list: Continue reading “2011 Goals: Half-year Review”

Parents stopped by. Dropped off one of my old hobbies/talents…

The last time I touched any of this stuff was more than a decade ago...

My parents came through Fourth of July weekend on the way up to Wyoming for their summer vacation. They brought up with them the last of my belongings that were at my childhood home. It was mostly art supplies. I don’t consider myself that creative and I certainly don’t think I have much talent. But, in my family I was always the creative one, the one with the wild ideas and the ability to convey those ideas through word or image. I took art classes through middle and high school and might have taken a quarter of figure drawing at one point in community college. Since then? I haven’t done any sort of creative work outside of the occasional writing and photography.

pencils, inks, erasers, etc...

Sadly, the one thing that my parents forgot was my old portfolio that has all the work I did in high school/college in it. That is still sitting in a closet somewhere in the desert. At least it isn’t outside where the extreme weathers would surely ruin the paper, chalks, oils, etc…

Black and white crayons, brushes, calligraphy pen, ink...

I don’t why I didn’t pursue art further. I had time in college to take classes. I must have thought that it wasn’t worth the time to practice at something I never considered myself very good at and so couldn’t do anything with later on in life. Yes, I realize how stupid that sounds coming from someone who got their BA in Classical Civilizations. I think another reason might be that I never had any interest in pursuing the craft through digital means… I like getting my hands dirty and feeling the paper beneath my fingers; and my parents didn’t have the money or processing power (this was the mid/late 90s) to get a drawing tablet or the software then in use. So, I sunk my time into other things: poetry and photography. I miss it sometimes. Now that I have all this stuff just sitting around maybe I’ll pick it up again… Who knows?

More pencils and graphites. Those might be water colors on the right?
This is a surprising amount of spray paints and sealers...

If you would like to see some of my old creative work and new stuff as well you can check out my other blog: Fictive Funk. I’ll be posting up old sketches all this week and next!

Anniversary Gift

Safety Razor!

Is what D got me on the fifth anniversary of our first date.

Stripped down
Itchy beard is more at fault that the razor is...

I’ve only cut myself a little using it so far! Besides a few knicks and scratches is worth the money I’m going to be save not having to buy disposable razors all the time.

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