Cabela's!!!

My good buddy Chan and I are planning on going rabbit hunting in a few weeks, we needed to get some related stuff and decided to go to Cabela's to get it. I had never been before and was blown away at the awesomeness of the place. It's basically a 2 story outdoor Mecca. There was cool taxidermy everywhere and a whole room of full body taxidermy of Texas native game in natural environment. It was comparable to some of the stuff at the Museum of natural history in New York, and probably better than the Field museum in Chicago, here're some pics.... and sorry about the bad picture quality, damn my iPhone

Yep those are actual american buffalo at the foot of the hill, dont know why there is also a polar bear

In the collectible firearm room there were historical handguns and rifles upwards of $20,000. Shoulda brought my checkbook.

Chan being mauled by a bear chair
And we couldnt pass up the animatronic shooting gallery, we were the only adults there for some reason.

Again, the checkbook problem.

Shannons machines

I finally finished building the tattoo machines that were supposed to be a Christmas Gift for my friend Shannon. I didnt have a lot of money, so one of the frames is from CAM and the other is a Dermagraphic from the 90's.

But besides the frames and screws, everything is hand made. I got the chrome off and blackened the CAM and chopped the Dermagraphic. This was also the first time I lathed copper, and the last time. I broke like 3 cut off bits. In spite of their humble roots both machines run really well, perfect for someone just starting in the business.

House Party 2

OK, I'm gonna keep this one short and sweet. Apparently Tina and I are now really into abandoned houses in central Texas. Here're some pics from last week in Seguin, maybe 30 miles outside of Austin....

Their were five or six buildings on the property, this was by far the most intact.

In this room I climbed through a hole in the floor and found a bunch of neat stuff, mostly bottles and broken china. I'm guessing late 1800's.

This is the nicest bottle, I think "remedy" means "opium"

I wonder how long this things been here.

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