A birthday to remember....

Tina got me a metal detector for Christmas this year. A good choice for me, one of my many weird hobbies is urban archeology. When we lived in D.C. I used to crawl under houses in the middle of the night wearing a joggers head lamp and dig for bottles, I found over 50 under our house alone. Mostly milk and soda bottles from the 30's and 40's. I used to talk about getting a detector and all the treasures i'd find near civil war battlefields and the like.

My birthday was a few days ago, and to celebrate Tina was going to go treasure hunting with me for the day. We drove around for a while looking for a good spot and found nothing of note, we did find a cool abandoned house on the outskirts of town though.

Here's Tina inspecting one of her finds.
This was found in a crate full of mason jars.

Front Door

Bathroom... I wanted to grab some of the furniture but we were scared of getting shot by country people so we kept a low profile.

The walls and ceiling were awesome, being in that place made me think of "the road"

We found 40 old keys in that house, and only one silver quarter. I think I'm going to try to get Tina to do some kind of art project with them.

After looting the house we drove around some more and ended up in Manor, Texas. There wasnt too much there but the town cemetary was pretty cool. Lots of old stones and statues of the virgin of guadalupe

Also My friend Sif made me a scrabble board as a gift. Thanks!! Her and her husband Paul are customers that turned into good friends. Paul is an engineer and Sif is, among other things, not able to beat me at scrabble.

santa is coming for you

Sorry I've been such a bad blogger this month, December is rough for most people, its especially hard for people who dont manage their time well. I'm that guy. I've been trying to shop for everyone on my list and it's hard. I haven't had time to do most of the fun stuff I try to do when not working or sleeping, I have been taking random pictures though so here it is...

Early in the month we were supposed to get two inches of snow, that's not normal in Austin. In the 5+ years we've been here it's snowed once, about an inch, which was gone the next morning. So I was understandably excited about the expected ice, everyone in town was. Unfortunately all we got was 15 minutes of flurries, it all melted before it hit the ground. Bummer.

Since I havent been out, heres some marginally blog worthy stuff that happened at the shop. 1, My wife realized her skills as a hairdresser, here she is cutting Brad's hair. 2, Simon (who is almost done with dental school) tried to fix Ben's toothache without surgical implements. If you blow up this picture you'll notice that Ben is terrified. 3, Cody did a tattoo wearing a ladybug costume that was a Christmas present for my pig. Thanks Jay & Cliona!

I've got nothing...

I didn't do much this week, and what I did, I guess wasn't documented on film. Thanksgiving was great though, we had a bunch of friends over and Tina made a kickass spread. Everybody ate in the living room and I madethem watch Rambo and The Jerk. Cody Simon and theresa...

Ladybird could smell the food cooking and was kind of hanging around the kitchen all day. Dorothy was also keeping a close watch.

Here's Baxter, doubled in size.

We went out with Ash and James a while ago, movies and gellati

Google it

If you're bored at work one day and you google image search "jersey douche bags" you'll find this:

and this....

but be careful

New Addition

Our friend Laura was in town this weekend, visiting from Florida. Her and Tina have been friends for years, I met her through Tina, when we first opened our shop in Texas Laura and her husband Chris flew here to help us set the place up, I had never met them before, they're pretty awesome people... This visit was all pleasure and no business. The girls spent Saturday shopping while I worked, Sunday we went to the flea market where I impulsively bought a puppy.

Half Jack Russell half Blue Heeler.

Dog day afternoon

This weekend we took Dorothy to Auditorium Shore dog park in central Austin. I used to take her twice a week, but since we moved it's been hard to find the time. Tina and I decided that we're gonna try to go every Tuesday for at least an hour. This is also a great spot to fish or kayak in the summer. You can see downtown and all the crappy condos that are being built for hipsters.

We hung out for two hours and Dorothy got to run, swim and fetch until she was limping. That's when we decided to go to la reyna for some tacos, the food's great and they're dog friendly with outside seating. I like to come here for breakfast whenever possible. The migas are the reason I ended a lifelong hatred for eggs...

An awesome day

This weekend I went to my friend Mikes house to do some tameshigiri. He lives on a 50 acre piece of property in Blanco, which is like an hour and a half outside of Austin. Its in the hill country in the middle of nowhere, so we all brought guns and made a day of it.

before...

after

here are Mike and Rob setting up the tatami mat

on the left side of this picture you can see part of the mat mid air

Mike is a herpetologist and has a bunch of neat turtles living in his yard. i think this an african tortoise. his house is a side panel from a vespa.