Another night cap with the Sisters

Our night started at the Field downtown for some yummy boxing day Irish food and a pint. The Field is a pretty good stateside Irish pub with a bar and live music downstairs and more intimate dining upstairs.  And it's also friendly!

http://www.thefield.com

Me & April...

Melissa...

Then off to the Harp in OB for fun live music of the Stilettos and a few more pints.

April looking adorable...

And the Stilettos...pretty awesome for free!  They do probably the most solid rock-a-billy set I've seen without having a bass player.  I'm not positive if they have any original songs, but there were some rather good covers of the Stray Cats, Dick Dale, Johnny Cash, etc.  By the end, most people in the bar were dancing...good times.

Sparkling neighborhood

It's very nice to walk around the neighborhood with Jason and see all the bright & showy ways people have decorated. The awful montages can be clicked on for larger views.

   

Just thought this was funny

Perfect sky

These are a few pictures I've taken either from work or coming home from work.  I thought they were kind of neat.

I'm currently coming home when the sun rises.

Possibly the longest happy hour in San Diego (click on me!)

A night at the Office in North Park, yay!  Used to be Scolari's, but I was so poor when I first moved to San Diego that there was never the chance to go before the the bar got its facelift.  It's pretty mod with a nice dark atmosphere as seen in the photos below; perfect for people watching without really getting caught.  One of those places where work garb, jeans + tshirt, or out for the night clothes can all blend wonderfully into the soft random lighting. 

And probably the best sink I've ever seen in a bar, though to complete the neo-mod effect it should have a sensor, not those grade school push-downs.

Playing Little Big Planet was a great way to wind down the night.  The kitty hides his face in shame; he cannot compete with Aprils mad skillz.  http://www.littlebigworkshop.com/en-us

Fringe Exhibitions

Susan Joyce, who runs Fringe Exhibitions in China Town in LA was thoughtful enough to include a piece of mine to be a part of the final show.  Sadly the gallery space itself has now closed, but Fringe Exhibitions will be moving on to more mobile adventures in the none-too-distant future.  What's amazing about Susan's curating sensibilities is that the work she chose to curate was truly progressive and technologically forward.  There's a very limited number of spaces that are willing to showcase artists who work in video and audio.  It's even rarer that the work gets shown with such sensitivity to presentation.  Too often that type of art is placed in a hallway or corner of a group show, instead of being given some breathing room.

Below is the opening which some of my friends were kind enough to brave LA traffic on a Sat night and come see me.  Johanna and her girlfriend Patti...not pictured are Tony, Ben, Carlos, Nate, and Zena who I believe were also wandering around the other open galleries & sampling the free spirits. 

My own little corner of the gallery with my work.

The wishing fountain just outside the gallery door with all the little goldfish and occasional turtle.

Five weeks later was the closing and a little get-together of some of the artists.  I guess I've decided to signify this with a picture of a Panda family eating a roast duck.  Yum!

The lovely hanging lanterns of China Town.

Susan's husband setting off a string of firecrackers as part of the farewell.

Thanksgiving in LA (click on me!)

We greyhounded it up to LA to visit some friends for Thanksgiving.  The greyhound wasn't bad...seemed clean and the employees were nice.  But for some reason the LA greyhound station is located in a somewhat sketch area.  I suggest having someone pick you up or taking a taxi to your destination.  Too bad GH doesn't have a place for bicycles...that would've been perfect!

The pretty mid-day sky of Oceanside on our way up.

Tony & Ben were the awesome hosts, doing most of the cooking, though everybody brings a dish of something yummy.

Here's about half the food and Tony on the phone.

Carlos out-classes us all.

There was a sweet calendar on the wall made by Ben's brother.  It was one of those typical nice calendars with family pictures and various wisdom-filled quotes.  But the quote below was truly the best.  Maybe it was a reminder of how to get through the holiday season?

We ended up playing touch football for a couple hours after dinner, but didn't have a football.  So we took a tennis ball, wrapped some cloth around it and then duct taped it into a foot ball shape.  Worked pretty good, but was a bit slippery in the night dew.  A lot of the neighborhood kids wanted to join in, which was cute.  I don't remember who this is holding the football, but she's quite nice.

I had to take a photo of this guy, because I thought it was weird that he was wearing Guinness swim trunks with a leather jacket.

The day after Ben, Jason, and I went out to Japan town for oodles of sushi.  And beer.  Perfect way to send us home on the Greyhound!

Happy Birthday to Jason :) (click on me!)

The lovely, wonderful Jason has turned 31... 

He got to wake up to a decked out kitchen with cake.  Happy Birthday, Jason!

I still like wrapping presents sometimes in the funnies.

Halloween? Halloween!

For this years costume, I had been collecting glow necklaces for a couple months in order to build an outline of the women's bathroom symbol.  Dressing all in black underneath made the colors really pop out. I think about 50 glow necklace were used and possibly half a roll of tape.

Pumpkin carving extravaganza! (click on me!)

Upstairs neighbor had a pumpkin carving party the weekend before Halloween.  Here are all our masterpieces: (can be seen better if clicked on)

And here's my salty ready for sea faring pumpkin.

The Porch display...unfortunately being San Diego it got a little hot that week & none of them made it Halloween.  Aw well...

OB bar hopping (click on me!)

It was a night between the Harp, Gallagher's, and some other pleasant dive.  Ocean Beach always makes me think if the Haight in SF & Venice Beach had a surfer child, it would be OB.  Great place to have a mellow pub-crawl or even just hang out at one bar between walks on the super long pier.  

April & Melissa spy something fascinating...we will never know what.

Yep, we are the cutest.

I think this was how was world was looking around me right before I spilled half of my beer on my lap.  I want to be embarrassed at how little I had actually had to drink before I did that, but with my coordination I probably still would have done it completely sober.

Magic Mountain and the test of orientation. (click on me)

Okay, it's been too many months since I've updated the ol' picture blog...terribly sorry.  To try & makeup, here's a bounty of new images from the September to December.  Hope they're amusing...

April, Farah, & I headed to Magic Mt for their opening Halloween theme weekend at the end of September (or maybe it was early October?)  Here Farah & I have just finished the Superman ride which is this fantastic J shaped track that you get shot up.  At the top of the J, looking down, is Superman.  I want to create a vest w/ a built in camera so that I can get some good pictures on these rides.  Our sweet April wasn't feeling the best, but fortunately she was back to 100% shortly after this photo.

It was kind of nice that even though it was Sunday, there were almost no lines...our wait times were between 20 min to none-at-all.  Makes me a little bit worried about the future of the park, though.  Support your local roller coasters!  With the lack of lines, we were able to grace almost every ride, including Batman the Ride & the Riddler's Revenge twice.  The scariest was Tatsu because you get to be strapped in facing down.  I kept thinking this will be the one time the harness mechanisms fail and there will go Pam, careening through the park.  Least favorite was Viper, only because the seats don't hold the head proper, so it gets all knocked around.  The most amazing was hands down X2, pictured just below.  The seat positioning moves all around during the ride, so that the rider experiences many different x,y,z positions while going up to 76mph.  And then there's the fire ball... 

I think this one's the Viper?

After 6+ hours of roller coaster intenseness, the simpleness of the Carousel was perfect.

     

Farah & April are Spooky

    

A butcher shop display w/ the most marvelous faux human bits in it.