..Or at least more pictures of logs.
So here's the recap:
I had an art show in Tacoma! Good times. Next show is October 6th in Olympia, at Room 30. Stefan Simikich will be showing photos at the Reef the same night, and Nikki McClure will be at Bryce's Barber Shop, so it's definintely worth the trek.. mark calendars now.
My mom has a little shop in the same building that hosted my art show; she sells beautiful vintage kimonos for dirt cheap! Check out Paper and Silk if you're ever in downtown Tacoma and need a kimono!
After the show, we went back to my folks' house and dressed up their dog like a clown. He didn't seem to mind.
Back at home, Rosebud the dog spends a lot of her time looking cute and docile like this:
But really, she is a wild hyena (or at least a feral Ibizan Hound) who manages to get herself in a pickle every few weeks. This week's medical trauma: lacerations caused by razor sharp oyster shells, sustained while chasing Great Blue Herons down the beach at low tide. In this photo you can see her normal foot in the foreground, while the cut-up one is in the background and swollen up like some sort of crazy club! Rosebud!!
Aside from dog trauma, we had a great visit with our L.A. peeps Margaret and Luke. I met Margaret on Craigslist when we lived in Los Angeles and I was desperately searching for studio space.
It was definitely one of those stars-aligning, fateful situations: in the middle of one crazy city, two girls find friendship and a common love of cats named Olive (yup, we both have black cats named Olive. And a mutual friend in thee Amazing Sam Ott). Margaret is one of the good ones.. so when she emailed me with a dream of a Northwest Summer Vacation, I was psyched to host!! She brought her awesome paramour Luke, and we did the following things in 3 days:
1.Canoed the Puget Sound
2. Identified Flora and Fauna of Totten Inlet
3. Attended the Mason County Fair
4. Ingested Curly Fries, Deluxe Nachos with a side of ground beef (Luke), Fried Catfish, Iced Tea, Raspberry Lemonade and 75 cent coffee (twice) at said Fair.
5. Witnessed the future of modern art in the Fair creations of two overachieving children named Taylor Diggle and Cassie Crabtree. Seriously, PaperRad better watch their backs..
6. Ingested Dungeness Crab, Oysters on the half-shell, Shrimp Scampi, and Steamer Clams at the casino by my house, and it was GOOD!
7. Gambled a few dollars, lost.
8. Witnessed the mezmerizing cultural rituals of Casino regulars, and watched a cover band called the Funaddicts (that's pronounced fanatics if you didn't already get it). We all agreed: more reverb on the singer lady's vocals.
9.Drove up Hood Canal, hiked the Staircase in the Olympic National Forest.. beautiful! Here are some highlights:
Then we took a moment to photograph potential solo album promo shots on a big log, while Luke debated about a million times whether or not he was going to take a polar bear swim in the freezing glacier water.
In the end, only Justin braved some wading action..
..and today, I finally took our Los Angeles visitors out of the country and into the big city: Olympia. We visited Buyolympia.com headquarters, and then hit up a coffee shop down the street, where I inadvertently discovered my favorite invention (on so many levels) of 2007: Bananagrams!!
Besides the awesome name, this game combines the best of both worlds.. Boggle and Scrabble. And it comes in a banana-shaped tote. I almost feel ashamed that I didn't invent this already!
