Wednesday August 10:

Here is a link to the best animated bit that I've ever seen. It's a public safety message from Great Britian. It takes a while to download but it's totally worth it. It's got hedgehogs!

http://www.thinkroadsafety.gov.uk/campaigns/hedgehogs/download/hedgehogs2003.mpg

Later that same day...

I couldn't go to bed without posting a picture of our ceiling mushrooms. (As you can see our back foyer has had a little unchecked water damage over the years.) These are the biggest ceiling mushrooms I've ever seen--the larger one is about 4" long. I think that this is the kind of mushroom that if you get close enough to it and inhale it's spores you'll have a giant mutant mushroom creature burst out of your chest about 36 hours later. Yeah, I won't be missing the ceiling mushrooms when we move.

Thursday, August 4:

Guess what came in the mail today! My toilet brush holder that looks like a human skull! It's much, much cooler than I thought it would be! Money well spent.

Re: Gathering stories, such as they are : Opposit the skull is a picture of a sculpture I made to greet Gathering roommate Kate Mc Kinnon when she woke up. It's made out of stale dinner rolls, a coffee stirrer and a piece of candy. Dinner roll man is guarding the continental breakfast (some stale bear claws).It's the stale guarding the stale and they're both not getting any fresher as they wait for Kate to drag her ass out of bed.

Monday, August 1:

We're home now! Got in last night, actually. I'd like to regale you with stories about the excellent time we had at the Gathering but I've got a ton of other stuff to do. In the meantime, please enjoy a page of Triangle Man photos that I took on Friday night in our sumptuous hotel where Cindy and I were drinking up a storm.

Sunday, July 24:

While making beads and doing mental bead inventory yesterday I remembered that two days earlier I had left a screaming cactus in etching solution. I didn't think there would be anything left of him but when I opened the bottle of Etch-All he was just as I left him--laying on his back silently screaming. When compared to a plump, healthy screaming cactus (B), cactus (A) appears a bit dehydrated but none the less worse for wear. How about that? I always wondered what would happen if you left a bead in etching solution for two days.

Wednesday, July 20:

Don left earlier in the week to install a brewing system in a pub in downtown Omaha. Before he left he put my website inside my store computer so now, rather than blogging from our apartment, I can work on the site from the comfort of my store's office-cave.Though the office cave is equipped with superior internet service it is not equipped with a freezer capable of producing ice. Can't have everything, I suppose.

Another recent addition to the computer's brain is "QuickBooks". Now that Don and I are an LLC I have to alter my accounting methods so other people can understand them. First I have to learn how to use the program, though, and I'm not opening that can of fetid stool before I have to.

Saturday, July 16:

I've been meaning to make a link to archived episodes of the Mel and Floyd radio programme which airs on Friday afternoons at 1pm on Madison's community radio station WORT. I'm doing so today because I found yesterday's episode particularly inspiring. Floyd had a bit about Karl Rove that was as informative as it was thought provoking as it was hilarious. (Are ya reading this, Kate?) Floyd briefly posits that at the root pf Karl's illness is the fact that he was born on Christmas Day. As we all know, kids born on Christmas Day often feel less special because everyone gets presents on thier birthday. Some people get over that feeling and some people grow up to be Karl Rove. It's a theory.

Having said all that I have to warn you that the Friday, July 15th episode is not yet on the website. Plenty of other ones are though so start listening!

In other news: Dig my bead pendant trees. My pal Erica made 'em for me out of a 6"x1/4" steel "cookie" and 12g enamel coated copper wire. Sturdy? And how! They look great with fishes hanging on them too. We hope to be selling these one day, if anyone's interested. So far no luck with designing a display for beads that are not pendants.

MONDAY, JULY 4:

We're back from Nebraska! Here's the store logo Don helped me design while we were waiting for a flight in Minneapolis. I think it's a riot! I'm having Cafe Press print me up a sweatshirt with this design on it to see how it will look. Would you ever wear a picture of an aardvark with flames shooting out of it's ass? Email me at aardart@aol.com and let me know.

MONDAY, JUNE 27:

Bug season is just about year round down here on the isthmus. When I first moved into my shop ten years ago I had a huge bug phobia. I would go out of my way to smash spiders even if they were way up near the ceiling not bothering anyone at all. Sometimes if the body was stuck to the wall in a prominent place like the foyer I would leave its body stuck to the wall and scribble a little note that would say “Tell your friends!” and draw an arrow pointing to the spider body.

When I grew weary of painting the walls every few weeks I decided to have a truce with the spiders. I’ve since learned that they’re not after the same things I am anyway; they don’t want my drink, they don’t want what I’m eating and, unlike the silverfish, the earwigs and those crazy long legged centipede looking things they don’t want to crawl on me and scare the hell out of me. Not much bothers you once you’re desensitized to giant spiders hanging all over the place except maybe silverfish, earwigs and centipedes.

Which brings me to my next story...Have you ever noticed a bug, moth or beetle somewhere nearby and you’re too lazy to put it outside or kill it so you leave it be thinking it will go away but it doesn’t? So you see it everyday and you mistake its decision to co-exist in your environment with it having some kind of affection for you and eventually you start wondering if it might not be hungry or thirsty? Then one day it just isn’t around anymore and you wonder what happened to it and you feel kind of sad? Has that ever happened to you? It happens to me fairly often. Over a week ago I noticed this plucky little moth flying around my desk. I didn’t pay any attention to it at first but after several days I noticed that the moth would come out late at night, flutter past my computer screen and then go hang out around this toucan-shaped fluorescent light I have. Since the moth and I were the only ones awake I developed a kind of rapport with it and named him “Higgens” after the manservant on Magnum P.I. Higgens hung out with me for about a week. I’m not really sad that he’s gone but his absence is duly noted. Higgens was one of the good ones.

In an incident unrelated to bugs: This afternoon I was eating at a Quizno’s in Monona (town adjacent to Madison) and through the restaurant window I saw a falcon eat a sparrow out in the parking lot! The falcon was dining right next to an SUV. When the SUV’s owners came out the falcon flew away with the remains of the prey. That was the damndest thing I’ve seen lately. Nature!

SUNDAY JUNE 19:

I took part of the day off on Friday to run through the Bead and Button Show in Milwaukee with my pal Cindy and Triangle Man. It was ever so much fun! I met many of my virtual pals including Michele Goldstein, the only person who responded to my plea for the meaning of Warren Zevon’s musical number “Monkey Wash, Donkey Rinse” (sorry I asked, by the way.) Next to Michele was another virtual pal, Kate Mc Kinnon. It was at Kate’s behest that I finally got up off my dimply butt and moved my blog page off ebay and onto my website where people can read it without accidentally stumbling over that picture of Lucy’s eggs. Good idea!

We were pretty tuckered out after walking around the show for three hours. Between Triangle Man and all the stuff I bought we were carrying a good ten pounds of crap with us. Triangle Man likes colorful beads so we took his picture at Michelle’s stand. We arrived safe and sound in Madison around 7pm. That was a relief because had we gotten lost or arrested in Milwaukee there’s no way Don and Kent would have let us go to the Gathering in July.

Cindy, though similarly attired to me, expressed great interest in going and even offered to drive. Her enthusiasm outweighed the rest of the group’s collective disinterest so we decided to go and say hello and be supportive to Erica. I agreed to go as long as Triangle Man could come along. We decided to have a few more drinks since we had to wait for Lost School member Brad to get done with his job at the library before we could leave.

The five of us got there around midnight. We were met with a surprising lack of debouchery. Apparently the Inferno has a “Multi-Media Night” every now and then when they have a local d.j., a light guy and show a featured artist’s work around the bar. It was actually kind of a cool place if you’re into really loud techno music, dancing, laser lights and smoke. I found a nice couch to sit on with Don, Cindy and Triangle Man. After a few more drinks I noticed that it was taking every ounce of my concentration to understand what people were saying when they talked to me. Bartime mercifully arrived shortly there after. We then packed up Erica’s sculptures and headed back to the welding garage for a few more drinks. Somewhere around 3:30am Brad, Don, Triangle Man and myself headed home from the garage on foot. Don carried Triangle Man for me because I kept tripping on my flip-flops. Friday was the funnest day in recent history.

So if you came by the shop on Saturday morning and it wasn’t open, that’s why.

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