Monthly Archives: July 2003

Art Fair Walkthrough

First, a warning: most of the stuff that I took pictures of is sculpture. I think it’s a bit impolite to bring a camera into a tent with a bunch of paintings and shoot pictures of the stuff that they’re trying to sell. For all of these pictures, I tried to ask permission from the artist before shooting. In some cases I wound up talking to whoever was managing the booth, so if you’re the person who made these beautiful things and you don’t want the pictures posted here, just let me know and I’ll remove them.

On the other hand, if you’re the artist and you’d like me to link the pictures to your website, I’d be perfectly happy to do that as well.
Continue reading

Art Fair Cooldown

Wet_Flower.jpg

There’s a new stretch of the fair over by the Burton Clock tower. One of the best parts of it was the little raised garden areas in the middle of the fair. The sprinklers were running, and it was a great place to sit and cool down for a while.

So there’s a quick teaser image to whet your appetite… There will be more of them in a huge extended entry later, when I have more time.

On a Stick

Not much today… It’s a wandering about type day for me. Every time the Art Fair rolls around, my boss schedules us time to wander about and refresh our creative batteries. It makes good sense, considering that we’re creative types. If it was an actuarial office or something like that, I’d be a bit more skeptical.

At any rate, I’m going to be out and about today… I may have a stack of photos to upload over the next few days. My main concern is going to be keeping cool and hydrated. I’ve got a two quart bottle of beverage in my duffel and a goofy hat to keep the sun off of my noggin.
Continue reading

Feelin’ Feeble

I’ve got to get back in the habit of working out on a regular basis. I tend to cycle between being in and out of shape over the course of a couple of years, and I’m afraid I’m on the low swing of a cycle right now. I need to fix that before the wedding, and keep it fixed once the wedding is over.
Continue reading

Art Fair Setup

My Fiancee has been counting down to the beginning of the Ann Arbor Street Art Fairs – tomorrow is the opening day, in case you haven’t been keeping track – and today is the Big Day of Setup. We had a big office planning lunch thing over at Cottage Inn this afternoon, and I snapped a couple of pictures on the way.

StreetSetup.jpg

And, of course, it’s started to rain. It’s raining in fits and starts, and it’s drying out just about as fast as it hits the pavement. The thing is, the people carrying their artwork around don’t want to be out there with big expensive things in the middle of a downpour. There’s nothing stranger than seeing a street full of people vanish into tents and then re-emerge on cue. It’s like a choreographed routine…

EmptyStreet.jpg

Two years too late…

Grr! And also Arrgh!

If only I had held off buying my car for two years, I could get both a Beetle and an iPod in one simple promotional package!

Of course, I’d still be limping along in my old ’89 Honda Civic… It had no AC and a disturbing habit of not starting if the engine was in a specific range of temperature… But an iPod! And I could have gotten a convertible bug!
Continue reading

Arr.

My folks were down for my Grandma’s birthday this weekend. She turned 92 on Friday. Happy Birthday Gra’ma! It’s amazing the sort of people who are on the internet now, isn’t it? I’m not saying that she is, just that she could be… So her party was at noon on Friday, so my Fiancee and I couldn’t attend… We sent flowers, which were well received.

After that, my folks came down to visit. Saturday afternoon we hung out and headed out for dinner and a movie. My folks are from Up North, and the movie places up there tend to damage their prints after the first couple showings, so it was a bit of a treat for them to see a movie without a huge scratch down the middle. We hit Pirates of the Caribbean, and it was awesome.
Continue reading

Palm Camera

Last weekend we got a replacement for my old Handspring Visor. It had become a cat toy, and the screen was being a bit fickle about the idea of staying on. I’d been able to affect some minor improvement, but it would still blank out at inconvenient times.

Palm is doing a trade-up rebate program on two of their PDAs, the Zire and the Tungsten. The Tungsten has some great features, like wireless connectivity, but the Zire costs about $200 less and has a nifty camera concealed in the back…

MyEye.jpg

…so we decided to go with the Zire.
Continue reading

I shutter to think what mite have happened…

When you’re working with a computer it always helps to remember one of the corollaries to Gigo’s Law: “Never trust anything important to an automatic spellchecker.”
Continue reading

Driver Zed

Ah, the majestic game which is Ann Arbor parking! So curious, so quaint… So incredibly frustrating.

The Bug’s been in the shop since Monday, and today’s a Dojo Day, so I’m driving my Fiancee’s behemoth of a truck. It’s a bit different from zipping about in my usual car in kind of the same way that an aircraft carrier is different from a dinghy.

Continue reading