Pots

Mayhaw Pepper Jelly


Chicken + Sausage Gumbo


The everpresent stock pot

Christmas in Louisiana is all vessels of opportunity. Wrapped gifts, stuffed animals, perpetually steaming pots, twin freezers parked in the garage filled deep with sealed packages of dark carnivorous treats. Here diets are lost causes and filling is the law of the land.

The Good Guys

So my 3 yr. old nephew Trey and I have been discussing things. Here's a few things I've picked up.

The good guys listen to the truth.
The bad guys go where the wild things are and bump into things.
We're the good guys.
We race the bad guys on motorcycles.
The good guys are big helpers.
And they listen to the truth.


Things are great here visiting my folks in Louisiana. I am, however, gaining approximately 5 lbs a day and have eaten samples of approx. half of the animals on Noah's boat. Samples include: catfish, alligator, wild pig, tame pig, flightless pigeon, cornish hen, rotissary turkey, etc.

Getting sleepy... Must escape land of crawfish lotus eating...

Thumbs Down Louisiana Transect

No pictures this post. It was too dark and the rain too thick to document all the delay and carnage on I-10 across southern Louisiana.

Here's the quote of the trip, though. Michael says, " Look at those A-holes on the onramp stuck in traffic. Wait a minute... they're merging with us. WE'RE the A-holes!"

So blizzards in Colorado turned into biblical rainfall in LA which turned our trip into an endless slomotion rubbernecking extravaganza featuring a car-carrier trailer split in half with all cars aboard roasted- and then a few miles after that another tractor trailer with the trailer exploded into charred wreckage and then a few miles after that on the super steep bridge over Lake Charles two cars wrecked on the bridge. Slow down and get off your cell phones or cb radios or crack addictions, people! Don't you know that Louisiana roads are designed to support the carnage industries?

Thumbs up Abita Springs, home of glorious Abita beer and some fine Acadian cottage architecture.

Thumbs-up for the Mississippi Welcome Center (MUCH nicer than the Alabama and Louisiana Welcome Centers)! It's this really nice brick mansion with this super hospitable hostess who offered us free beverages and gave us unsolicited directions and an update on the progress of rebuilding Jefferson Davis' house (a mere 25 million to rebuild the White House of the confederacy).

We didn't check out the Texas Welcome Center. We pretty much knew where we were going at that point plus I was sleeping.

Merry Christmas to all and I don't want to hear anyone bitching about taking shoes off at the airport. Try 6 hours of thundersquall and rubberneckage next time! People stuck in Denver are allowed to bitch all they want.

Ketchup and Time Travel

Here's the blog entry where we time travel together to catch up with the ghost of not-yet-christmas-recent-past. Here we go...

let's see, there were adventures in crawlspaces
















There were rooftop adventures with the worm drive saw.





There was snow!




I bought a Bosch Colt trim router...




And a Plymouth Colt Vista...


I did some finishing for Caroline.



There was keeping up with the Jones...



And a nice sunset tonight on Highland Street.

Masters of Mayhaw

I just got these pictures from my dad who by day is a sometimes-mild-mannered attorney and by weekend and whenever he's not hunting and fishing works in his Mayhaw orchard. Here's some behind the scenes documention of the budding mahaw industry. For those of you who don't know what the hell a Mayhaw is, well, use google and educate yourself. What I can tell you is that with the help of this little blue concentrator and the LMA (Louisiana Mayhaw Assoc) board, you'll soon be craving a scoop of Mayhaw iced cream.

Thank you Harvard Machine works in Clinton, LA!
Thank you LMA board!!
Here's part of dad's orchard. Also the little house in the background that Hugh and I helped fix up!

The Soffits of Madison County

Well here's my first post of any evidence of actual work being accomplished while I'm not forsaking this blog or watching netflix or eating at the OE. (which reminds me I have to ask Heather how she does those cool ass blinks on her site- she's got an Over Easy link, that geek!)

So this was the job that was supposed to ruin my back. All those white rectangles are 4x8 sheets of cement siding. Not as heavy as a PPB would suspect but far from weightless nonetheless. Fortunately I thwarted fate by incapaciting myself doing the setup work- that's the part of the job where you take time to prep things to make the jobsite SAFER. It's not supposed to actually cause the injury.

Anyway that's ancient history and recovery and since then Hugh, Ivan (Boryan's grandfather), and I have heroically finished the work. Notice the daunting 8' overhanging soffit. Those are full sized cement boards hanging 15' above would be sunbathers. Don't worry, we used lots of screws. Put on more sunscreen.

Also featured here is the studio and the original house Maria and Jakub designed and built with help from Ivan and Demeter. It was really nice to finally be able to contribute to their little settlement.

Street Mace

This array of pre-war (WW2) spices were perched on the side of this beat up old truck for weeks here on Highland St. Just thought I'd add some neighborhood color to the sphere. Spicing up the blog, ah yeah... 

Amelie will be a carpenter

This is my beautiful niece Amelie. As you can she she's planning on being a carpenter like her uncle when she grows up. She's checking that post for plumb and is obviously not satisfied. Also she's not so sure about the backyard fence. And she's planning an addition to playworld. How does she stay so clean? It's like a miracle in that sea of grass. Almost like she's walking on water. Hmmmm.

I'm still working on those bug pictures.

sin bugs

Just wishing we were in Guanajuato, that's all. Actually I just got the cutest pictures ever of my niece and nephew who are little bugs. I was having trouble posting that picture so Guanajuato will have to serve as a place holder until I can produce the bugs. 

Re: Cleanliness, Matrimony, Rules

Photographs are against the rules at the Buncombe County landfill so I had to drive away a bit and take sneaky pictures from the cab of my truck. I'm not sure what the consequences of dump photography are but I don't want to piss off the guys driving the giant stuff-crushers. It's good to keep on their good sides b/c they push you out of the muck on rainy days plus they could "accidentally" crush you and leave you for the trash archeologists to find in 100 yrs.

This is totally unrelated but I've decided that keeping the house clean and tidy makes up like 70% of the unwritten marriage contract. The unwritten marriage contract, or UMC, is made up of all the things you never talk about or even think about before getting married that end up being crucial deciding factors of marital bliss or discord. For us tidyness is a big factor. This one's tough for me b/c while I'm predisposed to excel in some spousal departments- handiness, sweetness, loyalty- I am in fact a natural mess maker. I spend my days converting perfectly good lumber into housing and dust. I find extreme comfort in eating crumbly things in bed. I like to organize things on the floor in little piles. Apparently some people (name withheld) find this system messy. Intolerable even.
Landfill-ish. I'd show pictures of the house but it's against the rules to take photographs. Kidding. 

This is blogging the future. Tommorrow we're having a Day of the Dead party. It was so great. Everyone had the best time ever and the dead were honored to boot. If this doesn't turn out to be the case I'll make another blog entry to rectify and promise never to record the future again.

Your reward for checking my blog is that you're invited to this party even if I forgot to invite you earlier. Even if I don't know you you're invited. Come it sugar skulls with us. And tamales. 

Jesus was a carpenter

I'm not saying I'm Jesus. We just have some stuff in common, JC and me. Apparently he was a woodworker although I haven't studied the bible to find out if he was a trim carpenter or a framer. I'm pretty sure they didn't stick build back in Jerusalem in the day so he must have been a finisher or perhaps he did olde cabinets or furniture. Anyway, I do know he rose again on the 3rd day in accordance with the scriptures. I too rose again from the near dead on or about the 3rd day in accordance with my need to pay the bills and get the hell back to work. I did get to finish Charles Frazier's new book in 2 days which is like a miracle. Also finished this great and terrible PS2 game GOD OF WAR in about as much time. So here's my advice to you would be followers who pick up silly heavy things and immobilize yourselves: lay low, heat AND ice but first ice, finish a book and a video game, find a yoga Guru (thanks Jackie!!), allow friends and neighbors to pamper you, and beer and ibuprofen are useful palliatives. Thus endith the lesson. 

Friday Night

Not a bad Friday night:
1. Charles Frazier signed my battered copy of Cold Mountain.
2. A confirmed man hater said that I was a good man.
3. Ada found this badass cover art. The Old Country by Mordicai Gerstein.
4. Randomly saw an old friend in for one night from Boston.
5. Miso Soup. 

Untouchable Face

Okay here's me psyching myself up to do some side work in blogworld. So far I've been too busy negotiating slings and arrows in the real world to get anything digital accomplished. So we'll see how it goes...

post the first

Well, I've managed to strain some muscle in my back beneath my shoulderblade in the region Ada and I refer to as the chicken wing. I somehow injured myself sleeping in a hotel bed this weekend in Atlanta. We were in ATL for a Lila Downs concert and perhaps the injury resulted from an imitation of Lila's dancing style, which Ada and I refer to as the chicken dance. So today I skipped work b/c I don't want to further handicap myself before our trip to Akumal, Mexico in 2 days and I finally have time to join the sphere. Here I am, blogworld! Adore me!!