ho hum

Havent been doing much lately, I found out I had a hernia a few months back and had to take it easy for a while. the last two weeks I've been trying to ease myself back into my routine, and I'm tired all the time. So any way I discovered www.chatroulette.com and I'm hooked. If you havent had a chance, check it out. Funny stuff

Paul and I are doing really well with the tattoo machine building, here's a shader we made for my buddy Luar. We hand made everything but the screws, after spending so much time on something its hard to let it go. I dont know what we're gonna do when we start selling them.
I got a new iPhone app that makes the camera photos look like they were taken with an old plastic lens with light leaks, its awesome... kind of makes me want to bust out my Holga. Here's Annie tattooing a client.

This is Lacey with her new banjo.

Fishing on the Coast

Last week Chan and I drove down to South Padre and did some fishing. South padre Island is a barrier island off the coast of south Texas in the gulf of Mexico, its just off the mainland at Port Isabel, TX and about 18 miles north of Matomoros, Mexico. I've been wanting to come fish in the Laguna Madre since Tina and I were here in September, we caught a bunch of fish and had a great time. This time around we had a blast and caught some fish but not many.

When we first arrived on the island we went to a dive bar for some fried fish, Elvis was there with his casio keyboard singing for the locals.

We booked a small charter boat for an all day fishing trip in the bay, here's the sunrise. I was so tired...

This is our captain, Ruben. He's been fishing here since he was a kid and was really a cool guy. He took us to different places for different kinds of fish. Mostly we were trying for Speckled trout and Redfish, but I was also hoping for Drum and Black tip shark.

Here's a small redfish, too small to keep unfortunately. We also caught about 10 trout and a catfish...

The old man and the sea.

Here's an abandoned boat on a small island in the bay, Ruben said its been there since he was a kid.

Marina houses...

When we got back to the dock these guys were waiting. They fought over the scraps of fish.

On the road there were huge fields of wildflowers everywhere, it was beautiful. Mostly indian paintbrushes and bull nettle. I guess the draught is really over.

spring has sprung... sort of

Slowly but surely it's been warming up around here, unfortunately its been raining a lot too, last week we did have a few days that were warm sunny and dry though. One day I went over to Ben's new place and we went out for breakfast, it was warm enough to eat outside...

I went out to check the mail the other day and this guy was on the sidewalk trying to soak up some rays, needless to say he was not happy to see me. At first I thought it was a rattler, but it's actually a gray rat snake. When they feel threatened they rattle their tail and open their mouth.

We were doing some cleaning recently and found some old photos. Here's me as a juvenile delinquent circa 1988.

Luna's Party

Yesterday was my friend Luna's 2nd birthday, she had it at this inflatable jumpy castle place. It was awesome...

Tina and Cody

I only got to use the slide once and I had to pretend I was helping some kids
Annie and Olive

snow blog

OK, so it finally snowed... It was actually coming down all day and even stuck on the ground for a few hours. This was the most its snowed since we've been here. Everything closed down and people were avoiding driving. Thank God we had the day off...


The next day after the blizzard I went to the Avenue Barbershop on Congress. this place has been around since 1933 and never disappoints,

as long as you obey the three cardinal rules...

sunday...

This was in the back yard of a townhouse my mom is considering moving to. No Thanks.

My buddy Paul came by yesterday and we welded a bunch of scrap metal in the garage. We're going to start making tattoo machine frames pretty soon and want to brush up on our welding skills before we jump into it, Ben has been staying at our house for a few days so he got in on the action too...

Grainger

It's been raining like crazy for the last few weeks, and it's been cold. I havent done any outside stuff lately. bummer. The weather broke this last weekend and Chan and I went exploring north of Austin. There's beautiful land that the state and Army corps of engineers manage, people hunt fish and hike, its huge. Unfortunately because of the rain a lot of the fishing docks were under water. I think the fish were kind of freaked out too, we didnt catch anything. It was great though.

I think this spot was near Circleville. That tree used to be on the shore. When we were leaving this place we saw a lot of coyote carcasses on the road.

This is an awesome Santa Fe caboose from the early fourties. It was on blocks in a field by some silos, not near any tracks.

It was locked up but here's a pretty good view of the inside, I really wish I could've gotten in there.