Dinner With Bob and Shannon

Finally managed to catch up with Bob and Shannon again, last night at Gruet Grille. Bob took some time this past summer and crewed on a catamaran with some friends who were sailing from the Galapagos to some other South Pacific islands. They were out at sea for 19 days for one stretch, ending up in the Marquesas, where Shannon flew in to meet up with them. We heard the stories, and it sounded like a pretty amazing time.

Bob came back long-haired (relatively speaking), bearded, and tattooed. Click for larger.

 

new patterns and a Canadian

I have a three color variants of this new design up for scoring now at N+A. After selling nothing but your choice of five one-hundred-dollar-ties, they've finally got some new stuff for sale: wallpaper. Yes, wallpaper is back, my friends. Do any of you out there have traumatic childhood memories of wallpaper? iridescent metallic? floral patterns bigger than your head? "accent" walls? flocked? [shudder]

My current design hero over at N+A is a Canadian! named Ray Fenwick. His work is f-ing awesome. His stuff is really quirky, and hand-drawn, and usually typographic. He's a letterpress printer and designer and type geek from Winnipeg. They picked one of his patterns for the new wallpaper, and while I think he totally deserved it, check out his original color scheme, compared with the wallpaper for sale.

Hrmmm.

Anniversary Dinner at El Farol

Last year, after we moved, Scott and Megan generously sent along a gift certificate to El Farol. We're huge tapas fans, and we were grateful. But we weren't sure we had anything to celebrate right after moving, and then our anniversary got busy, and it sat awaiting a special occasion.

Last night, we finally used it for an anniversary dinner. Outside, in the courtyard, with a pitcher of sangria and a bunch of their little plates (including their legendary fried avocado). It was a beautiful, cool night, good for a walk along Canyon Road.

Thanks again, Scott and Megan.

Dogs In Old Pickups, Photographed On The Way To The Farmers Market

 
[click for larger]

weird and wonderful

Jett and Shriek hipped us to the DeVotchKa show (with Thriftsore Cowboys) at Santa Fe Brewing Company last night. Great music, outside at sunset and then under the stars. DeVotchKa bills themseves as "Eastern Bloc Indie Rock," but that's kind of selling themselves short. With accordion, upright bass, guitar, drums, trumpet, violin, theremin, and sousaphone, they made a wall of sound that just sweeps you off. The lead singer sounded at times like Jim Morrison, Brendan Perry, Bryan Ferry, and Bono.

When they finally tie the knot, Jett and Shriek have declared that DeVotchKa will play at their wedding.