I got the recipe for huevos rancheros from Smitten Kitchen. I made this for our kayaking trip this past weekend but I had a lot left over so I made some for dinner last night. That’s right, I made fresh salsa with some heirloom tomatoes, Walla Walla sweet onions, and a jalapeño. It was delicious.

This was the view from my roof the other day. Not a heck of a lot to say about that. Innit purdy?

I missed having a pocket knife so after much deliberation and searching I picked up a Benchmade Mini Griptilian. It was a little pricey for an every day pocket knife considering you can get one for $20, but it was $60 shipped from ebay so I figured it was OK. I really like it. It’s light, opens easy, seems to stay locked well, and is sharp as hell. I don’t use it all the time but when I do find a use it’s nice to have in my pocket.

I got the urge to play again but found my old Ibanez RG220 was pretty badly damaged. I guess moisture got to it and rusted out a lot of the bridge hardware and apparently destroyed one of the pickups. It wasn’t worth the cost to repair it since I’m pretty sure I only paid $250-300 for it 10 years ago. Instead I went and found my sound. I thought that to get the early/mid-90s fuzz/crunch I needed an alder bodied, rosewood necked, Made In the USA Strat. Turns out that’s not the case, rather, it mostly isn’t. The one I found, and then a week later went back and got after trying out a handful of much more expensive alder/rosewood USA and Mexican made Strats turned out to be a basswood bodied, maple necked, made in Japan Strat. I didn’t like the way the rosewood fretboards felt and to be honest I really kind of did want a brighter sound from the guitar. It can easily be warmed up with an amp or other means. I’ve found the syllabus from a guitar class I took in college and I’m going back through it to get back in the swing of things. I have to say I missed it.

i found this site called Valet Mag from a Metafilter. it’s a site about men’s fashion and grooming, pretty standard stuff. they had a feature on shaving and i’d been thinking of switching to a safety razor for a while now. seems like a good a time as any to start.

ok, i know it’s been a while. lots of things going on i can’t get in to right now. i haven’t been shooting, i haven’t really been doing much interesting, so i haven’t been posting. but there will be stuff happening soon. and i’m going to make an effort to shoot more. so stick with me. follow me on facebook or something to keep current.

a couple weeks ago i took the MSF Safety Course and got my motorcycle license. i figured the only logical thing to do would be to get a motorcycle. so i got myself a ninja 250r. still getting used to it, since it’s a bit different than the bike i had in the class, but it’s loads of fun. a friend of mine at work that had a bike for a while and then sold it decided to get a ninjette too, in addition to another friend who has had one for a while now. we’re a biker gang! hopefully his gets fixed though, so we can go on some longer rides. commuting is 10x more fun now, but it’s still kind of boring.

yesterday was the Fremont Solstice Parade. it was special this year because Tessa was dancing in it! more here.

i’m moving hosts, it’s not going smoothly and i don’t have time to deal with it properly. here’s a picture of a sleepy shiba to tide you over.