In my earlier travel update on our trip to Yellowstone this summer and the black bear we saw walking right next to the road. I wasn’t very smart about it and was running down the road after him to get good pictures along with a missive crowd of people. This are the best photos of him that I thought were worth re-posting on their own. So here he is.
Out in Cooke City Montana there is an old house. It has new glass in the windows, it’s doors hang on rusted hinges, the inside was long ago torn out and slowly accumulated junk within, and the house itself has been weathered by time so much that it now more resembles an old haunted house. I love this house. Every time I see it I have to take a picture. This year it was different. The ground around the old broken down house was covered in purple flowers. Slowly but surely all that was old becomes new and all that is new will soon be old. It just takes time, all things change in time. You will only see it though if you are willing to wait. So wait for change and bring in the new from the old and maybe even the old from the new.
So it is official now, I have had this blog up and running for a whole year. This time last year I decided that I would publish my own work and share what I thought and how I felt with the world. I just wanted to take a quick look back at some of my favorite works I have done, photographs and writing a like.
Of course there was the Shoe Tree from last years road trip that we found out in Oregon. The dawn of the creeper photos early on in the beginning of the blog. Who could forget the somewhat haunting video of Hood doing his she wolf performance. One of my favorites, the baby shoe gangster.
This one is for my mom. Her favorite, the abandoned truck bed out in Salt Lake City.
The rants were fun and I think quite a few people enjoyed them as well. Rants like the Mosquito Hunter seemed popular. My favorite Creeper Photo of them all, the infamous red hat.
This one is for my grandpa, my most faithful and loving reader. đŸ˜€ Thanks for all of your support, I know you really liked this gecko a lot so here he is again.
Short stories like the Blind Man and poems like Mary all try to explain and explore what it means to be a human. And of course my persona motto, If Only It Were That Simple, to explain how I try to see the world.
Finally here are just a couple of photos that I really liked over the course of my blog.
The list could go on forever. Thank you to me readers or anyone just poking in to get the occasional read. It has been a good year. I look forward to many more.
I always call chipmunks chippies now from a summer of hearing them being called that up in Northern Michigan. It is almost instinctual but after I saw it I always stop and wonder, did I really just call that chipmunk a chippy? Then I remember, yes, I have spent way to long using Yooper slang.
Anyway, this cute little chippy was in Yellowstone out by the confluence of the Yellowstone River and the Llamar River. He was definitely the smallest chipmunk I have ever seen. You can sort of tell by the proportion of that piece of grass to his entire body. I just love how he is precariously perched in the bush just munching away.
It is interesting that some of the most common wildlife can still be so extraordinary at times. I ask myself how I can appreciate this little guy so much when I have pictures of other more rare wildlife like a red-tailed fox and a black bear that seem so hard to compare to this picture. Still, I find even the most common of wildlife amazes me. It isn’t the animal, or its rarity that appeals to me but rather the idea that it is life in its most raw and savage form. Even these little cute guys, it is nature, it is life, and to capture any level of life within the eye of my camera is an extraordinary experience.
I went to my first ever concert yesterday with my lovely friends Golnoosh and Hailey. Lady GaGa is amazing! It was such a good show because it wasn’t just a singer doing their songs, or even just an amazing performer, it was that she interacted with the audience on such a personal level. She talked with the audience, at one point people where even throwing their clothes on stage and she made her own outfit out of all of it. She had such personality, and not to mention her dancing and singing skills that just made such an awesome concert.
One of the best parts of the show was just watching the way the crowd responded to her. The whole building felt like it was shaking from the base and the jumping throng of people. She would ask the crowd to do something, jump, throw their hands up, or just scream and they would. It was amazing to see how much control she had of such a massive bundle of chaos.
Anyways, to start off, the people where insane. So many people were dressed up in the wackiest of ways ( many were dressed in a more than slightly whorish fashion though). I was dying to get creeper photos but sadly didn’t have my big camera, so I got a few but you will have to stay tuned for them. We got our picture taken with this really creepy guy that had an awesome outfit on.
Some of my favorite outfits where this guy, all the people with tin cans wrapped in their hair like curlers, and the people wrapped in only caution tape. It was an interesting night full of interesting people. The opening band was also… interesting. Semi Precious Weapons opened the show and at first I thought the lead singer was GaGa and I got all excited. As soon as I saw his face on the camera view television I was so shocked.
I just said, Oh my God, THAT’S A GUY! I really thought it was a woman, he was wearing a long grey t-shirt and fish nets, that was it. At one point he even pulled up his shirt and gave a nice full shot of his butt in fish nets and even gave us a little shake. Let me tell you, I saw my fair share of ass this concert, more than my fair share.
After quite a wait, the show began. At first it wasn’t even GaGa, it was just her shadow.
You know you’re famous when a giant crowd will wig out just because they see your shadow. When her shadow came out, the crowd went wild! Then slowly we could find GaGa’s figure in the dark and man did everyone go insane! Every time she moved it was a torrent of new screams and applause.
She was rocking those purple shoulder pads in a big way. This set was really cool because within the hood of the car was a piano and she just ripped it open and started playing. It was so cool. Then everyone moved over to a big neon flourescent jungle gym.
I think it was some sort of modernized stripper pole but I could be wrong. It was fun to see all of the dancers, and of course Gaga just crawling all over this thing. After this Gaga made the first of her many wardrobe changes. It was something like eight times that she changed her clothes.
I loved the nun outfit which was totally see through and to compliment the saintly attire, a bloody skeleton hand. The dancing was phenomenal and the sets were amazing to look at. It follow a sort of Wizard of Oz plot of descention into scarier and scarier places until the final set, the monster itself.
But along the yellow brick road there was a lot of dancing, outfit changes, singing, and insanity.
Oh and the coolest outfit of all was this strange fairy electronic dress.
The entire dress moved on its own and even had wings in the back, photos can’t capture the life in this outfit. definitely the most spectacular outfit of the night.
Oh yes and lots of blood and tiny dresses. I thought she was going to pop out of this dress. She kept having to grab it and fix it while she was dancing around.
And finally, the monster with Gaga in its clutches. Strange that it appears to be an angler fish…. Still it was really cool to watch Gaga interact with the monster. And what Lady Gaga performance is complete without boob and crotch fire?
And yes, the monster is watching in the background along with tons of little children that are sitting there wishing they too could have sparklers come out of their crotches. The poor minds of the younger generation.
After that it seemed like the show was over, which was very sad because she hadn’t played Bad Romance. But then the lights went out again, and the encore began! More singing, more Gaga, and more dancing!
Thanks Gaga for an awesome night, an awesome first concert experience, and just a bunch of fun, music and dancing.
This was one of the stranger looking animals that I stumbled upon on my road trip home. I nearly stepped on him while I was stalking the infamous white buffalo in Jamestown, White Cloud. I was trying to run away from packs of mosquitos while also attempting to spy the elusive White Cloud who decided it would be a perfect to hide behind a bush as soon as I decided to show up when I saw a small movement on the ground. At first I thought it was a squirrel but it didn’t have a tail and had a bunch of these weird stripes on its back. Then I decided it had to be a chipmunk but I had never seen one like this, with that many stripes and no fluffy little tail. I started thinking that maybe it was a mutated breed between a squirrel and a chipmunk maybe with a third wheel prairie dog thing going on, just maybe. So I was confused and a little creeped out by his eyes. He had such weird black doll eyes that just sought you out no matter where you moved. It was fun though seeing an interesting and mysterious animal like this. My aunt Karen told me that it was indeed a 13 striped squirrel which was something I had never heard of before. So yea, I saw a 13 striped squirrel. Jealous much?
There are always things in places where they don’t really belong. Take this pear for example, left half eaten on a Lake Superior shore of an old copper smelting factory. No person for miles that could have left it there, yet it looked fresh. Not even a few hours old. Just sitting perched on the edge of a sandstone wall. How did it get there, who left it and why. It doesn’t belong but it still is. This is an ode to the things that seem out-of-place, the lone person you see standing in a moving crowd, a child’s shoe in the middle of a market place, all of the things that stand out like something colored in a world of greys, notice them before they all disappear into the ordinary.
Today was an interesting day, I had an MRI. On the many avenues I have traveled down in search of a diagnosis for my unknown illness, this was the most intense of all the methods of diagnosing. It was in an open bore MRI machine but there really wasn’t anything open about it…
As the doctor was briefing me on the procedure we tells me the only side effect to inserting the contrast that has been seen is nausea and vomiting. He said it only happened in about 4 out of 300 people who had contrast injected along with the MRI procedure so I had nothing to worry about. He also told me that if I got nauseated that I would throw up, no question about it. I would definitely throw up if I didn’t feel good. As soon as he said this I knew I would be one of those people who got sick. He injected the contrast and lo and behold I just looked at him and said, I am going throw up. So he ran over and took of all the head-gear and gave me a basket. I almost threw up but actually didn’t which was suprising. He just laughed and said, you proved me wrong, you are the only one who didn’t throw up after feeling sick.
Lucky me.
Many people have told me they wanted to see my brain and the way I think. Also many people have questioned if I had a brain. Here is the answer. Here is about every view of my brain, enjoy đŸ˜€
For the last couple of days I have been in Chicago to celebrate my grandmothers 70th birthday with my dad’s side of the family. My mom, brother, and I drove down to Chicago and we met the rest of our family there. We stayed right downtown and it was really nice but ridiculously hot and humid out. So here is the recap of our days happenings.
The first day after we arrived we walked around downtown Chicago after a few interesting incidents…. like Gabe humping the entering Wisconsin sign. Yes my little brother is strange.
The first thing we did in Chicago was an architectural design river tour on the Chicago River. It was very interesting to travel through Chicago by river and then go out into Lake Michigan to see the Chicago skyline. We also went along the navy pier. 
It was nice hanging out with our Philadelphia cousins and seeing all of our family in such a cool setting. The heat was not very enjoyable though, especially walking blocks after blocks in the boiling heat and humidity. We met my grandmother’s brother and sister-in-law at a nice restaurant right on the river. They gave us about four free desserts because they thought they took a long time to get our food out but I thought it was really normal. The desserts were amazing, like one which was a mint ice cream cake coated in a marshmallow cream that had chocolate drizzled on it. So good!
After that we walked around some more and headed over to Millennium Park. By that time we are running from one shady spot to another trying desperately to escape the sun. So we were hiding in the shade while I was trying to get pictures. Meanwhile Aunt Eileen was having fun with a cow sculpture…
We had a brief visit to the Art Institute of Chicago after a long day but we were so tired that we bailed out quickly to go back to the hotel room for resting time.
The next day my family went to Gino’s East a famous pizza place in downtown Chicago. It was featured on Man v.s. Food, my family are big fans of that show and try to go to the places on the show any time we can. Like when we visited the Crab Pot in Seattle. We got to Gino’s and the decorations were amazing. The entire building was graffiti up and covered in writing and pictures. Not to mention the food. I never had deep dish pizza before so Chicago’s Gino’s was the best place to start I figured. I was totally right. I was worried I wouldn’t like it but it was so good. It had an amazing cornmeal crust that just blew us away.
We also went to Al’s Italian Beef restaurant which was also featured on Man v.s Food. We had it catered to my uncle’s home for my grandma’s birthday dinner. We got to make it ourselves which was quite the experience. It was so good and you got to dip your sandwich in the sauce and it was one of the best sandwiches I have ever had.
Over all we had a lot of fun and it was really nice to hang out with my whole family. There were a lot of laughs and very strange things but it was so great to see all of my family that I normally don’t see.
Grandma’s birthday party was a lot of fun and I can’t wait for another little re-union like this one to get to see everyone together again. Happy Birthday Grandma!!
My mom and I took a hike up to Hungarian falls in Hubbell Michigan this morning. It was really nice. There are two sets of falls and we visited both. The first was a this big pool covered in greenery and ferns.
Then we headed around the top of the falls seeing many others on our way. It was a really nice hike and the water was beautiful. I really enjoyed the greenery and the beautiful Michigan woods.
