Mug Shot

Roommates : Bah'ai

One late night Saturday, my roommate and I were deep in conversation when two guys started knocking on the neighbor's door. And continued. And continued. We peeked underneath our blinds to see what was going on and got caught. Finally, it's our door they were knocking on.
" Um, excuse us but could we borrow paper and pen? "
" Well, I don't know you " I said.
" It's Nicholas, Nico! "
" I don't know a Nico. "
" Well we're just trying to to leave a note for our friend. She's coming into town blah, blah, blah... Seattle... "
" Isn't that what phones are for? "
" Well he doesn't have one and I don't have the phone number. "
" This is kind of weird you know?"
" No no, we're non-threatening. We're bah'ai. Well, he is. "
" Ok, I don't care about your sexuality. "
" Ha no, it's a religion. We like three sexualities. "
I slowly got up to get an index card and pen. I opened the door.
" Do you have a sticky-note? "
" Dude, you're pushing it" said the other, " Maybe some tape? "
" No I don't. Put it in the screen door. "
I shut the door.

This has been a true story.
The End.

Roommates : Hoarse Cat

Our neighbor, we call him Schwinn (more on him later), has a cat named Hoarse Cat. One day it decided to pay us a visit by window pane.

Roommates : BYOP

Although we have yet to have any dinner parties, parties or even friend movie times at our apartment due to our 'mononucleosis' and general anti-social behavior, this is what it would look like if we were to invite you over to share a plate of food.

Roommates : Girls Night In

A daily thought.

Roommates : Oven Mit

Getting our ducks in our row has been quite silly. Gathering all needed utensils, tools and gadgets has led to some innovation and compromise. 

Roommates : Stealing Wifi

I moved into a new apartment. It's perfect and I hardly ever want to leave. However, there are certain quirks that make it that much more of an adventure. I've sketched up some comics to explain the situation.

The Power of Strums

The Perks of Strep

I've come down with the sickness and now, after two shots in the bum, a bunch of antibiotics and salt rinses later, I have the time (a week) and energy away from work to reflect. This is what I've decided : having strep (besides the whole nasty bacteria in the back of my throat problem) was a great thing to have come into my life at this moment. Here's why :

• watching all eight Harry Potter's in a row
• getting back to sketching
• naps whenever I please
• writing
• a stay - (in bed) - cation
• lost about six pounds
• sitting with my roommate until 2 PM before finally actually doing something
• tea
• decorating my apartment
• the care of my mama and papa
• reading
• realizing this blog needed major TLC
• texting my mom and best friend a lot
• being in bed wrapped up in two comforters while the heat is set to 70
• having an excuse to be anti-social
• writing down my ideas

Perhaps most importantly, that in this whirlwind of working full time and being involved in many things and many lives I might not have focused on doing nothing and allowed my creative energy to shine through anymore. I missed starting projects and then eventually getting them done. I even missed pacing my personal space. I'm a creative person and I had lost that quite a bit. Forty hours a week is a lot to commit to a spot where you're there just to fill a role. I still love my job but I might need to remember that I love my not-job life more. I'd like to refocus on rebuilding that, even with a stuffy nose.

Video Dollz

So this is what happens when there are pretty leaves, good company and a video camera...

When Inspiration Strikes...

Share.

"Spiritual progress is a spiral advance. We start as infants in the animal eternity of life in the moment, without anxiety for the future or regret for the past; we grow up into the specifically human condition of those who look before and after, who live to a great extent, not in the present but in memory and anticipation, not spontaneously but by rule and with prudence, in repentance and fear and hope; and we can continue, if we so desire, up and on in a returning sweep towards a point corresponding to our starting place in animality, but incommensurably above it. Once more life is lived in the moment -- the life now, not of a sub-human creature, but of a being in whom charity has cast out fear, vision has taken the place of hope, selflessness has put a stop to the positive egotism of complacent reminiscence and the negative egotism of remorse. The present moment is the only aperture through which the soul can pass out of time into eternity, through which grace can pass out of eternity into the soul and through which charity can pass from one soul in time to another soul in time."

- Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy

La poule mouillée

There's a point in time when it's no longer cool to run away from your problems. Perhaps it's when you're using a walker or maybe it's when you look like a wimp, but there's definitely a time.
Life comes at you. And you better deal. And you better stick up for yourself and heck, you might as well even get what you want.

So remember to cliff jump. And to go to the beach. And do things you like.

This has been a personal pep talk.

Merci pour ta considération.

Criminal

I was in the newspaper. This is how it happened:

The Importance of Being Cool

As I grow older and closer to maturity with my parents, I realize how flippin' cool they are. Not in the like "we still go to hip concerts and buy our kids whiskey on the weekend" way but more so in the actual cool way. As a parent you donate the rest of your life from the moment a six pound screaming bundle of joy is born to slinging diapers, paying for soccer camps and taming raging teenage hormones. And holy shit, that's pretty cool. That commitment to another hungry, and sometimes hangry being is probably the hardest thing one could ever do. So thanks Mom and Dad, for being so cool.

Nite Light Lyfe

This was taken atop Mars Hill looking down at the Flagstaff light life under a full moon.

Senior Home Livin'

You know you work at a retirement home when…

The most action you got was an old man saying “How are you today, besides beautiful”.

You get called ‘cookie’ forty times an hour by a screeching Jewish woman with lipstick on her cheek.

You make a medal for a grouchy woman for being “The best walker and simultaneous ice cream eater” in order to motivate her to take her ice cream to her room so that you can go home on time.

Everyone complains that the coffee is too strong and not hot enough. 

“The chef is so nice! I wonder if he’s got a girlfriend” said woman 1

“ Oh stop it, it’s none of our business”, said woman 2. “I wouldn’t want to crawl in bed with him though, he’d take up the whole thing!”

“ You’re horrible, but I’ve wondered how that’d work...”, said woman 2

You let your farts flow free because there are eighty people who are four times your age you can blame it on.

Look at Them Flippin' Hipsters...

Adult Prom?

Why yes, everybody is required to wear a dress!

Broc Balls

Need to satisfy a craving for meatballs but are feeling vegetarian? 

Here's an option that doesn't taste like meat at all... But they are delicious!

1 head of broccoli

1 cup spinach

1 cup chopped almonds

1 cup parmesan cheese

3 cloves garlic

1/4 cup olive oil

basil, salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350. Put all the ingredients (broccoli first) together in a food processor and blend until mostly smooth. Add the almonds last so that they don't get too fine. Grease a muffin tin and plop in the broc ball mixture. Bake for about 35 minutes or until they're lightly browned. Serve with spaghetti or on a hoagie with marinara sauce for a vegetarian meatball sandwich!

Jerome

Sometimes all you need is a whirlwind adventure to an abandoned high school and a drive through the Arizona desert.

Jerome 2013!

Oh yeah, and this happened

I fear stopping my education, that I won’t acquire continuous insights, random facts and weird foreign names. What if graduation means I don’t come across new books or pieces of art? I fear not being told stories, I fear not wondering about new things. What if I get stuck in my ways? What if I think I’m always right and there isn’t a professor to tell me I only put in a C-worthy effort? I fear the lack of stimulating conversation and goofing off.

Now my education is up to me. My graduation allows me to choose even more precisely what I want to know. But what if my personal education leads me astray, what if I become irrelevant? What if my personal education leads me to follow intellectual trends too closely and encases me in popular knowledge?

Now my education is up to me. Just as it is not up to me. Life isn’t going to toss me textbooks any longer. Life is going to toss me paying loans, dealing with human relationships and managing my multiple interests. Life is going to challenge me with new jobs and tasks. Life might even challenge me with stagnation and frustration. Life is my professor and I’m going to need a tutor.

Now my education is up to me. I’m pledging as a B.A., B.S. that I will continue to question and wonder about the arts and sciences. I write this with a sense of utopian exploration hoping that my personal education leads me to move forward, seek positive change and look for reasonable solutions. Because now, my education is up to me.