the first photo I took with my iPhone

 

deHaan Party of Five

Those Are People Who Died, Died

With the dawn of the new year, it's interesting to look back and see who has passed on in 2015. Some of these names have been very recently in the news; others have been gone for what feels like several years. Some belonged to the higher circles of art, some less so. Some will be missed, again, others less so. The one thing they all have in common; they've started the journey each of us will one day take, alone. For that, if nothing else, I salute you:

Jerry Tarkanian

Leonard Nimoy

Sam Simon

Sir Terry Pratchett

Gunther Grass

Andrew Lesnie

B B King

Sir Christopher Lee

Dusty Rhodes

Dick Van Patten

Omar Sharif

Vic Firth

Roddy Piper

Frank Gifford

Fred Eckhardt

Wes Craven

Yogi Berra

Paul Prudhomme

Fred Thompson

Scott Weiland

Nicholas Smith

Chris Squier

James Horner

Dave Henderson

Lemmy Kilmister

Natalie Cole

Merry Christmas 2015

Halloween '15 Pumpkin

Ein Kleiner Deutsch Biergarten

My wife and I visited München several years ago. I had recently discovered the world of homebrew and had been branching out into new styles. German beer seemed fascinating. I loved the way every major town seemed to have their own style, and servers in each town might get huffy if you ordered a rival town's beer. For example, going to Köln and ordering an Altbier (the style from neighboring Düsseldorf) was supposed to be anathema. While we were in München, I noticed that nearly every restaurant and hotel with enough space had a special garden for the bar patrons. It was usually surrounded by a little fence and had climbing vines over the gates. Very, very gezellig. As the sun went down and we wandered through the cornfields to the only open restaurant in the area, these beer gardens started lighting up in the gathering gloam. The moment was magical. Five years and two children later, I started looking into transforming our little patio into somewhere we could enjoy the gezelligheid of the German beer garden. 

Nothing But 8-Bit Blue Sky From Now On

I'd recently finished a little work on the garage, which included installing some weatherproof speakers on the wall facing the patio. I stood outside to enjoy the stereo, but one thing was distracting me from my water-resistant aural bliss. The exterior of the garage looked terrible. Undefinably blue-grey paint was flaking off the siding. The white trim was all scaly and less white than I would like. I spent the rest of the fall '14 and early spring '15 painting it with Summer Sky blue paint from Metro Paint. It cost maybe $35 for 5 gallons and it looked pretty good when it was finished.  
My friend Nick from Ineptech came over to check out the result and suggested doing a mural on the wall.