These Days

The reunion. (and a nice sunset.)

2010-06-04T00:21:00.005-05:00

At the Ellis reunion, Sam, being reclusive at dinnertime. ^^
The lovely ladies, Jenna and Dinah. I like how their eyes pop with the green background.
Some neat eyecandies laid out in inspired fashion.
Steve's British car and the shed. Quite a lovely shed at that.
The outhouse (where I saw said eyecandies, and left flycandies)
This was the general assembly area. Mind the hostas.
Uncle John sporting his bird-watching binoculars, His mother, bored.
Nation, bored sitting on the bricks.
they asked me if I wanted to play badminton.. While they were waiting for an answer I took a picture and said "no, not really" and they walked off. John laughed at the situation.
Here we are on the eve of the second day enjoying our last supper with the Ellises.
on the way home, we stopped to look out at the sunset on the Mississippi. Very grand stuff, its a really nice drive down and back on 35. We stopped in at an ice-cream store in Bay City which I would suggest to anyone heading out that way. Also, The art gallery in Stockholm was really nice.
Jenna took a picture of the last rays of light climbing over the silhouetted trees... Very pretty columns of light and she managed to get a crucifix in there :p

Fin.

:)

etc

2010-05-15T11:02:00.005-05:00

Mother's Day

2010-05-11T01:28:00.003-05:00

My brother Philip and sister Dinah kidnapped me from my room around 10 -11 am to include me on a special "surpise" edition of mother's day. Phil and Dinah live out of town and didn't tell anyone they were coming in.. Even I, their favorite brother, was left in the dark until the mission was go. Well fortunately I had already finished my mom's gift, a collaged card the day previous with Jenna at her parents' house.

as you can see, she loved her gift :) (she did.. she's faking her disappointment here)

And later that day Phil suggested that I move up to live with him in St Cloud which I've seriously considered and have agreed to do. I will be leaving within the month I believe.. SO. Big news, there you have it.

I'll leave you with a link (flash required) good ol' Dan'o sent me from up thar in Canada country: http://www.theoddmanout.net/games/beforeTheLaw.html

Have a wonderful day ;)

2010-05-11T01:13:00.002-05:00

As many in the Mankato area already know, being as news gets around pretty durned well 'round here, Melissa adopted and saved a runt of a pig doomed for slaughter in the near past. I've only had the pleasure of meeting him once, but he's a charming little fellow if he is a little pigheaded.

Good ol' Pig Windom takes a break from all the rooting he's been doing since he moved in to greet new and peculiar smelling animals. Pictured below: Local vegan activist, "Dave", censors self for the camera.. Before this, he was yanking on the leash shouting for Pig Windom to "OBEY!" Pig Windom is stubborn and goes where he pleases.
Frankie finds a beautiful place to stop and take a doggerdoo on the lawn while Trooper points like a good ol' poo hunting dog.
Below: Trooper, inspired by Pig Windom, rolling around in filth.
Pig Windom making eyes at Frankie's behind.
I will always remember how he tried to mount Frankie and how Frankie responded to that advance... I have never seen a dog so angry.

Cheers all.

2010-05-07T00:06:00.009-05:00

THE TEA HOUSE

Its another day at the Covey homestead. Buddha greets the day in two rung fence pose. Not for beginner yoga students. After the supply grab made in town, we waste no time starting with the designing process... There were a couple arguments concerning aesthetics but in the end, everyone agreed: Jenna is right.
It was mid to late afternoon by the time I realized I had my camera and started to photodocument the process of dream-weavery. Above, Jenna hones the edges of her elegant yet simple "wingtip" design.
:) I just like this one ^_^
This is how the Coveys do business. Drunk.
Master Commander, Jerry Covey calling the shots.
Jenna's favorite part of the day: sanding / filing.
Jerry and Jenna hard at work while Jeremiah putzes around with his camera.
Oops. How did this get in here? I thought I deleted this one... ;)
Buddha Bernie the enlightened dust bathing cat.
Kim showed me some of her prizier stones.. This has to be the creepiest stone I've ever seen. :O Dinosaur? Elephant man? Alien? Nobody knows...
The next morning (Oh yes, Tea house building is a multi-day ordeal) Kioko being adorable as per usual... Sporting a nice J tail.
Everyone had their 2-5 cups of coffee and got cracking at the job.. Above, Jenna looking 12.
Jerry contemplates with squaring tool.
Meanwhile- Jenna and Kim were wasting no time devastating their backs on some heavy stone removal... And I helped.
The lovely Covey ladies working as a formidable team
After a most delicious lunch (no pictures, was too hungry) we got back to the work... see that sand? I hauled that :O. Here Jenna works to smooth out a nice foundation to replace the stones.
I managed to climb the tree nearby to get some artsier shots of Jenna as she smoothed and compacted the foundation further.
Not bad...
Daaayyuummnnn... That's a nice flat foundation! (we were very pleased with ourselves) Kim applying finishing touches here.
Kim and Jerry upholding the little tea house skeleton.
The cedar looking mighty pretty in the afternoon sunlight.
:)
Jerry measured things occasionally.
I like the lighting here..
There was already a general feeling of success as pictures flashed-- Smiles in the audience, Jerry with a steely look of determination.
"Good enough" was our motto on the day.
I had to leave before we finished screening the whole thing, but I'm sure it all came together nicely.. A wonderful weekend comes to an end at the Coveys.. I dare say, the days were more productive than most.

I drove home and enjoyed the clouds, played my music loud.

april into may

2010-05-03T15:00:00.008-05:00

April came and is gone.. The month started out promisingly enough- a job, usually so elusive, just fell into my lap as I was picked up by "Rug and Carpet Caretakers" here in Mankato town. In the nick of time, no less... (My bank account had been steadily dwindling as bank accounts are oft to do.) A friend of mine was the in and I worked closely alongside him in the weeks following my hire. We were in the business of mending horrible and scarring atrocities done to the lawns of our winter snow removal clients. "Like putting a toupee on a whale." I says to Dan. Dan really liked that analogy. By the by work slowed down sumfin' fierce and By the end of the month I was let go. The discontinuation of our business relationship was comparable in many ways to nomadic communities' ceremonial: "crossing raging rivers a few miles up from the bridge so as to leave behind and to their fates all the old people burdening said nomadic communities"

"You basically got a month worth of free money" says Dan. "Eat shit." says I. I'll have to trounce him the next time we play chess. In all seriousness, I enjoyed working alongside the guy. He's a good man and if anyone thinks otherwise, they can just.. save it.

Between then and now there probably a few more milestones and points of interest.. My birthday for instance, it happened again. Now I'm a solid quarter century and life is opening up to me like some really pretty lotus. Morel hunting season came and went as well.. A modest but successful season, it was.

Above: blurry photographic evidence of morel hunting exploits. (photographic evidence tends to be...)

My birthday was a blast for the most part.. At least up until the end of my recollection of it. I opted for the standard overdrinking procedure that comes with the territory.. The best gift I received was from the lovely miss Jenna. A beautiful portrait done in pencil and a gift of watercolor paints and brushes. Thank you Jenna :).

Much of the weekend times this month were back and forths between Minneapolis and Katotown made in the name of love ;) The expensive long distance kind... But we manage, we do :).

One of my favorites city expeditions thus far has been the stone arch tour:
We walked around on a most beautiful afternoon with bellies full and Jenna's massive camera lens... We saw a technicolored segway tour, various city hardened waterfowl, several really adorable dogs... "did you see that one???" And we almost saw a skeleton down by the river. We think the dude was lying to his girlfriend, though..

Let's see.. An excuse for more photo highlights.

Above^ andre gets stuck in a tree on a morel scouting excursion.. He tore his pants, too. :)

Above. carl.. being cute.. the result of a cute cat contest with jenna :)

Above, Jenna being beautiful.

some pretty intertwined flowers^

Me having a snack.

Dave pissed dan off and rode in the back on the way home from a failed morel scouting excursion.. here's dave looking cold and Dan looking satisfied

finally, a bit of deer skeleton me and andre found in a tree.

next issue: may.

2009-04-23T03:38:00.009-05:00

So. Dave showed up at my house... I decided to scare him as he came in the door to try to capture his reaction:

He invited me to go to an "ask an atheist" meeting at the college.. There were two awfully rude christians in the front row who weren't there to be open minded or promote productive dialogue... not that that should be expected of fundamentalists, but... anyway, they were just causing a ruckus... I ended up getting pretty pissed off and let my mouth fly a couple times at them..
"yeah but monkeys never waged holy war, either, did they?" was one of my reactions. couldn't conceal it, every argument they made was weak illogical to the point of offense for me.

I'd like to see them hold a panel, i would.. I'd really like to show up and sit in the front row with all my pre-packaged questions and pre-rendered reactions, you know? savages. blergh.. anyway.. before we even made it to the meeting we had a couple tall beers near the observatory cleverly concealed from campus parkinglots or campus cops or what-have you.. basically we found a nice place out of sight (ironic an observatory) and pounded a couple.. which in retrospect is probably the reason i couldn't contain myself at the atheist meeting... heh. anyway.. we parked out near the observatory and saw not one:

not two:
but three deer in the woods nearby.

Anyway, the two questions I asked said atheists were as follows: "how old were each of you when you realized or decided you were atheist... how old where you when you were certain?" most of them said early twenties.. the only girl on the board said 16.. a couple dudes said 18 roughly. I figured it was interesting enough to know that across the board they were all just becoming adults when they 'converted'. Secondly I asked them something like this: "Is there anything of any religion that you have taken to heart outside its context? I for one appreciate the taoist sense of balance and duality.. I resent that religious people can't accept what's good in outside religions-- In the gospel of thomas, and i know a lot of christians don't recognize that gospel, jesus said "drink from my mouth and become as i am". This to me is an incredibly revolutionary thing to say.. It is basically saying 'keep the dialogue open'. its saying we share our existence and by sharing it become one-- what examples of good in other religions have you as atheists recognized?"

The answers were weak and later we figured the christian antogonist prickwads attacked them into a defensive state already and it was hopeless to expect any compromise on their part.

sad world, it is sometimes.

Later we went to the "brother ali" show on campus. It was rather up in the air whether or not I was going to be able to get in.. Student I.D.s were required for free entry, otherwise the cost at door was something like 6 bucks... Wayyyy too much for me. I borrowed dave's brother's i.d. and was nearly barred entry when the ticket guy said "this definitely isn't you... I know this guy" Shortly after he looked me in the eyes and asked "is he going to be coming tonight?" we said "no" and he let us in... Was too packed to get very close for any decent pictures, but here's what i managed to capture.
^above, brother ali.
^brother ali's hype man who made it clear that he was a "full band"
Brother Ali addressing his apt pupils.said pupils appreciating their teacher.
this is our leaving campus.

Later on dave and i went downtown... I was pretty drunk by that point and no longer had my camera with me. Walking down the streets near the 'bar-muda' triangle, I saw a couple harley's parked next to one another and thought I'd try to jump them... "hey dave, check this out" and i ran up to them-- at the last second I decided i was going to veer off and jump to the side.. i didn't get the most ideal approach to the jump-- Well my loafters begged to differ and my feet slid out from under me resulting in a crushing slam of shin and exhaust pipe.. Embarassed, I lay on the ground for a few seconds hoping nobody saw me.. I got up and tried to hobble away saying to dave "let's get out of here before anyone notices what happened"

just my luck a big ol motherfucker from across the street comes running over and shouts in his manliest voice: "hey.. hey you! what's going on here?" etc etc... I tell him I just slipped into the tailpipe and everything was alright... and you can see for yourself and so on and so forth, but he grabs me by the arm, pinching my skin underneath my coat and drags me inside the nearest bar: the aptly named "choppers". "HEY TONY" he says in his most dramatic voice. A dude at the bar wearing nothing but denim and leather looks over at us. "THIS GUY WANTS TO HAVE A TALK WITH YOU" I tell the guy to let go of my arm.. "i'm perfectly capable of being mature about this" i said.... already embarassed enough as i was... The guy in denim walks over... "I caught him snooping in your "random jargon I don't remember for the little leather bags that hang off the back of big ol' motorcycles"".

I told him that was bullshit- "i just slipped and bumped your tailpipe, you can see for yourself its not damaged". the big dude in denim tells the other guy off and under his breath mutters something like "pff.. making something out of nothing". I was glad the drama was over.. we ended up going to a house party nearby... I realized i was bleeding pretty heavily from the leg.. Some kids at the party poured whiskey on my leg and their dog cleaned my wound thereafter.. I felt pretty badass.. Later the dog and I made out uncontrollably in the basement.. was pretty hot.

All kidding aside, I love dogs.. they are so tentative.. so sensitive and emotionally intelligent.. its incredable... they take care of their own better than we do these days, you know?

ahh.. anyway. have a good night all.

on said hip hop show

2009-04-21T00:04:00.011-05:00

well.. i didn't feel like taking pictures of said hip hop show.. turns out everyone was celebrating the weed-smokers holiday 4/20. a.k.a. hitler's birthday.. didn't want to enhance their paranoia.. the camera brought too much attention on me so i left it in a buddy's car. hip hop was alright though.. I did however take pictures on the walk down.

here they are:

this egg nearly fell on me as i walked by... i looked up almost expecting to see some ruffian kids laughing.. but it was a robin's egg that fell from the bas relief sign of "holiday inn".. i thought the moment was rare so i shot it.

day at the farm

2009-04-20T12:18:00.018-05:00

There's been a lot of turmoil in my life lately but there have been a handful of nice days intermingled with the shit.

9 days ago, the eleventh, a saturday-- a bright and sunny one at that-- was one of the good days. The night previous was hard on me.. I didn't sleep well for the usual reason, I was lovesick. Tessa came home at 5 in the morning and woke me up because I had left my light on. I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't do it. Knowing the one I loved was out at the bars all night--and not only that but she ended up god knows where with god knows who doing god knows what until 5 o'clock in the morning- It was troubling on the mind.

I don't mean to call her out on anything-- It was understood that the transition was going to be difficult.. its just hard to love someone who doesn't have the same feelings for you anymore..

Anyway- getting to the point- I had made loose plans to spend a day out at my friend's recently purchased farmland with him and another friend, Peder. Alex, the man with a plan, is a good friend of mine whose head always seems to be in the right place.
below: a picture of said friends on another, previous adventure-- stickswordfighting along the blue earth river a couple years ago.
alex is on the left and peder is on the right. as you can see, they're terrible sword fighters.

so. I was weary and tired and it would have been terribly easy for me to cancel the loose plans made a week or so prior-- But I knew I needed to get away from the pain and I knew I wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep anyway.. So I stayed up from 5 to 7:30 and waited for their call-- When they arrived, we hightaled it over to the nearest gas station to stock up on coffee and donuts and then to alex's parents' house where we packed everything we needed onto the trailer. We also brought Alex's dog, Prairie. She's my favorite.

Then we headed toward the highway, toward Amboy.

the car ride was enjoyable, albeit stuffy. Pickup trucks don't have quite the seating accomodations i'm used to. I had to sit on one of those terrible fold out chairs perpendicular to regular seats. I had about a foot of space between the rear window and the front passenger seat to wedge into... Prairie was opposite of me and we got to know each other really well back there for about and hour and a half or more. (if you know what i mean) ( yeah, we sexed.)

Along the way we listened to some twangy bluegrass and we sang along with our best southern voices
this song was a highlight... ricky scaggs - mansion s for me A MANSION FOR MEEEEEEE MANSION FOR MEEEEE

very fun to sing along to..

So it went like that-- we drank our coffee, listened to bluegrass-- their eyes on the road in front of them, my eyes on prairie (the dog).

It was about the sweetest thing ever, getting out of that car to stretch my limbs in already warm morning sunlight... I walked the property's perimeter with camera in hand to get a feel for the place.

the soil was soft and I enjoyed the sensation of walking over it-sinking ever so slightly into the earth with each step... My first inclination was to walk toward the trees along the property's outer edges and so i did.. Prairie followed along leading our pack of two... Interesting how dogs can do that. It speaks of intelligence, i think.. Prairie is a very intelligent animal
.
. ^Above: Prairie leads the way-- waits for me to catch up.

While I was putzing around, taking pictures of the trees and their twisted shadows, the windswept grass which resembled waves churning or fire crawling as it does on a flat gasoline doused surface-- I managed to catch Prairie taking a dump on my landscape... (My viewfinder is not representative of the images I took because I know I cut the sky out of my composition.)

Well this putzing around went on until i took a left at the edge of the property and spied the shed Alex had been working on building in his previous outings this spring.. I took a rather gloomy picture of it then enhanced said gloominess with vignetting hijinks in ps. (sorry)

to be balanced I took a dreamily over-exposed shot of the same shed with a less dramatic angle..

(which I also vignetted-- but inversely.)

if half finished sheds aren't that appealing to you, you might not enjoy the following images either:

alex pluckin on mah banjo above, peder's doubled reflection below:

I waited for about 30 seconds for him to walk into my shot-- i heard his footsteps approaching in the grass and he lingered outside for a bit before he made it into the photo.

I spent a little bit of time inside the shed plucking on my banjo trying to master the rolls I had recently gone about trying to learn for myself.. (with the aide of a youtube video the day before.)

I got lost doing that for a while before I decided to wander back out into the warm sunlight-- again camera in hand... I'll spare the details, but here are some more pictures of the day:

my camera died halfway through the day so i missed some photographic opportunities.. we drank beer on the roof of the shed, we grilled food, i napped in the hammock, drew pictures, read, etc etc... the day was very good for my soul... I have to remember to get out there more often in the summer to keep track of progress made there... There's something very nice about the idea of planting, tending, harvesting your own crops.

2008-12-18T19:58:00.000-06:00

itty bitty happy moments

at the art studio

2008-12-10T17:26:00.000-06:00

tessa and i booked it on up to the msu art studio for as to git' some work done up thar
tessa wanted to work on her portfolio for a class and i needed to work on a super secret birthday present commissioned by pat for his wife katie. ( but its super secret, so don't tell anyone. ) Heh.. (internet, don't fail me now)

We listened to music, painted- occasionally i'd wander off to take pictures of the place- (You could throw a dart in any direction and it'd land on something incredibly distracting.. colors on parade, i tell you... or "a riot of color" to use a phrase I picked up while helping tessa study from her art history note cards. She likes the phrase.)\oh now where was i?

the parentheses tangent that never ends.. oh how it breaks the flow of my train.

Here are a few photographs of said riot:

some pictures over the last month

2008-12-08T14:27:00.000-06:00