Lost in the fog today…

We’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing record break­ing high tem­per­a­tures… which is actu­ally nice–the streets aren’t too crowded and every­one slows down. The other pleas­ant side effect is the inevitable thun­der­storms that roll in after the heat wave…

It’s been a rainy, some­what reluc­tant spring, weather-wise. Today was no excep­tion, com­plete with tor­nado and flash flood warn­ings.. most other days are moody, stormy morn­ings with sunny after­noons and stormy nights. The cloudy skies have been beau­ti­ful though.

This past week­end brought the first peonies of the sea­son though, which always puts a mas­sive smile on my face:

…I was in Stock­holm attend­ing an open­ing with one of my neigh­bors. We were there to see a piece of my work on exhi­bi­tion, one which earned me an award that night. The evening was freez­ing and strangely solemn but there was cham­pagne and a few laughs –not too shabby, really. Time flies…

This year brought friends and loved ones from far, far away to share in the hol­i­day festivities.

Christ­mas owl

My neigh­bors are a lit­tle into the holidays…

Came home after a long, LONG day to a com­plete sur­prise:

Feel­ing very lucky.… and loVed..

I met one of my new-ish neigh­bors a few weeks ago… He’s very nice, but rather secre­tive… and told me later that he’s in the wit­ness pro­tec­tion program…

I haven’t shot any­thing in weeks, months even… which makes me rather sad. I have a feel­ing the dry spell will soon end.

A few shots from yes­ter­day:

Despite unre­lent­ing rain for the last few days, I’ve been in a pretty great mood lately, yes­ter­day espe­cially. But today, a warm, glo­ri­ous sunny day, I’m feel­ing blah–seems I’ve strained my upbeat muscle(s). So, I’m try­ing to perk up with music in the form of a fairly ridicu­lous and silly playlist this after­noon. Among the tracks is:

Lis­ten­ing to this sort of music makes me want to cook up a storm and host a mas­sive din­ner party for all the peo­ple from around the world whom I love. Imag­in­ing every­one in one place for once in my life is absurd and thrilling, but maybe some day, right? Per­haps for my next house warm­ing? Who’s in?

Back by pop­u­lar demand, another install­ment of tips for life. Enjoy!

This morn­ing has brought hard­ware dif­fi­cul­ties to my stu­dio which pre­vent dig­i­tal work from being under­taken until repairs can be made. As a result, Aman­daMuses will not likely see many updates dur­ing that time.

Stay tuned, folks.…

So it’s Valen­tines Day, for those who cel­e­brate the occasion…

Can’t say I’m the biggest roman­tic– I grav­i­tate towards the Baude­laire and Poe end of the spec­trum ver­sus the Keats and Byron end. Even so I enjoy thought­ful obser­vances of the day whether expe­ri­enced first hand or not–it is a shame really that we need a sched­uled hol­i­day to get us to artic­u­late our affec­tions but what­ever works, right?

For those who pre­fer the greyer end of the spec­trum, here are few tunes for you:

This video was made by a fan after Mark Sand­man’s death but it’s a good song, imho.

So dear read­ers, how do you observe this spe­cial day?

A mod­ern ver­sion of the last film, nar­rated by Stephen Col­bert:

I drink a lot of tea and cof­fee, thus mugs are one of the items that tend to join me in my fre­quent trav­els; but I wasn’t always a mug user.

Thanks to this handy instruc­tional video, though I was able to mas­ter the del­i­cate art of mug use and ownership:

Ever wanted to fast for­ward life? How about eight years in about two minutes:

In this short video, JK Keller flips through eight years worth of daily self-portraits. The sta­tic images from his daily photo project can be viewed here on his web­site.

I took this shot of myself a year ago today when I lived in Oak­land, Cal­i­for­nia. A lot, thank good­ness, has changed since then… not the least of which is my cyborg eye shrink­ing back to its nor­mal humanoid size…

What a stu­pid day! Seri­ously! Was it 1995 today, I didn’t check my cal­en­dar? Did I sud­denly switch back to enjoy­ing the blaz­ing fast speed of a 14.4 modem?! I can’t remem­ber– I for­got where I was while watch­ing a sim­ple ZIP archive (AH file, as in ONE) of press-ready files upload for HALF A YEAR after about 2 hours (TWO) of cussing and spit­ting at ridicu­lously unre­spon­sive (pro­nounced USELESS) FTP sites. I’m pretty sure that 10’x10’ ban­ner I designed a few years ago uploaded faster.. y’know all 25gigs, GIGS of it.

Do not even get me started about net­work­ing events or traf­fic; JESUS– I’m pretty sure there is a miss­ing army of the undead dri­ving your stolen cars as we speak…