April 2007

Bendy Pipes

Took a photowalk around the Minneapolis warehouse district over the weekend, and have started posting photos from it. I actually have quite a few that I like, so expect to see them trickling in over the next few weeks.

Beyond that, not too much news. The weather over the weekend was nicer than I expected, even with the rain on Sunday. Got a fair amount done around the house, which is nice, but I’m in the middle of projects, so I can’t really say “I finished something.” Just made progress.

And that was pretty much the week at work, too. I didn’t finish anything, but I made progress. I always get kinda antsy after shipping a product (see below) and before getting full-steam into the next version. There’s lot of managers planning stuff, and I’m sure things will get moving for real soon, but most of the stuff that’s happening now feels like “busy work.” Necessary busy work, but still… It made a day wandering around and taking pictures feel just a little more fun, since between being in the middle of projects at home, between releases at work, and not having taken any new pictures for a couple weeks, I needed a creative kick in the butt. And even though I haven’t posted all the photos yet, I can feel like I finished something.

As expected, Friday night was the Auto Body Experience show. There were a few surprises though. The first was that parking at the Eagles Club was hard to find at 7:30. Second, a lot of the happy-hour crowd hung around until well into the ABE set. Third was that the stage was so dimly lit, I didn’t think I’d get any pictures at all. But by cranking the camera up to ISO 1600, and putting on my f/1.8 manual focus lens, I managed to get a couple photos I don’t hate. And finally, I was surprised that I hung out until after the band was done. They played until 1, and I’d been up at 4:30, so it was a pretty darned long day for me.

The Auto Body Experience

Saturday I slept late, processed some of the pictures, and cleaned the wall in the basement that I was planning to paint. But I ran out of time and didn’t get to the painting as I’d planned. Oh, and I poked around the garden a bit. Needed to cut out some of the grass and volunteer onions that keep coming back year after year. Only got a couple more feet of productive space, but I’m not in a huge hurry, and chopping out what’s basically sod isn’t the easiest work, so I’m tackling it a little bit at a time.

Sunday I opened up the basement windows and painted. Got done about lunchtime and ate some lunch, then it was over to the Saints ticket pickup party at the Summit Brewery. Once again, there were more people than I expected, and I had to park farther away than I’d planned, but it was a good time seeing my “Summertime Family.” Now I’m getting antsy for the season to start, but that’s not even three weeks away at this point, so I guess I can survive the wait.

The weather? Beautiful through the entire weekend. Temps in the 60s, plenty of sunshine, and just enough wind. The kind of springtime weather that makes putting up with winter around here worthwhile.

I don’t have a ton to say today, I think. But I’ve got links to a couple long essays below, so if you’re looking for a lot of words, my laziness won’t hold you back.

Not so much a busy week as a lazy one this week. The cool weather and snow (we did end up getting some snow, but nothing near the amount the panicked weather-babes were predicting) put a damper on my enthusiasm for darned near anything. But tonight the ABE are playing at the Eagles Club, and with the Front Porch Swingin’ Liquor Pigs opening, it should be a fun evening.

Well, the weather folks are freaking out again. Seems we’re to get four to six inches of snow later today. I guess I’m a mite dubious after some previous false-alerts, but don’t think it’s really going to change the way I approach the day. I’m gonna head in to work, and if it gets really nasty, I might leave early, but then again, I might not. If I have to shovel tomorrow morning before work, so be it. But it’s pretty hard to get worked up about snow in April.

But the cold weather, that’s got me down a bit. I’ve been struggling along with even less energy than usual due to the cold, and am really looking forward to a couple days when it will be warm enough to open my basement windows so I can paint down there. I find myself wondering if I’m going to get it done before May.

Will the rain ever stop? Sometimes I wonder. It’s been raining since last thursday, and seems like even longer. And that’s colored the whole weekend. There’s been some decent light out for photography, since rainy weather makes for nice soft light and vivid colors, but it’s cool and wet enough that I haven’t wanted to be out in it. And things are just starting to green up, so there aren’t any flowers or such to grab my attention. The result is that I haven’t taken any pictures since getting back from Arizona. It’s starting to bug me.

But I really should be staying inside, anyhow. I finished tearing out the shower in the basement last weekend, and the plan for this weekend was to clean up that area (and some of the rest of the basement, too), and then paint the wall behind where the shower used to be. It’s in pretty sad shape, and really needs to be dealt with and it seemed as though a rainy weekend would be perfect. But I’m still feeling lazy from the after-effects of the cold I had, and haven’t gotten much done on that front. And with dim light all day, it’s pretty easy to stay curled up in bed extra-long in the morning, or spend the day suckling at the comforting blue glow of the glass teat. Which, when you get right down to it, isn’t a bad way to spend the weekend, either.