Another Vacation Pic August 30, 2010
Posted by Mitchell in Art, Home, Watercolor.comments closed
I’m going through all of them now a bit closer than when I did when I first got back. I’m looking for good painting subjects. Here’s a nice one of the Mormon temple at Idaho Falls. It was cloudy and the light was mostly iffy, but the sun did break through from time to time.
I think that they always put up a statue of Archangel Gabriel Moroni on top of all their temples (the horn threw me off). I think this has the potential to be a nice painting. Great atmospherics going on that day and watercolor is fantastic for that kind of stuff.
Anyway, good job Idahoian Mormons!
Trance Thursday August 26, 2010
Posted by Mitchell in Art, Music, Trance.comments closed
Actually this is a better version than the other one:
Meet The New Boss August 25, 2010
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Same As the Old Boss
Howdy! I’ve decided to ditch my old on-line moniker of Enas Yorl for my real first name: Mitchell. I made the changes to my Gravitar thingy so you’ll start seeing that next to my smiling face instead of the old one.
There are a few lingering questions about this that I’ll go ahead and clear up. The first: Why this, and why now? It has occurred to me that at some point I’ll want to do something non-trivial with these fancy networks of thinking machines and it would help to have my real name associated with the stuff I do out here. Oh, I’m not making any big career changes at this time (and certainly not in this crappy economy) but I’m looking a few years down the road and who knows? Anyway, to get from here (anonymous guy fooling around on the web) to there (legitimate money-making guy) will require some changes and I thought “Why not now?” Old and busted: Enas Yorl. The New Hotness: Mitchell! Woot!
Secondly, what the heck is an “Enas Yorl” anyway? In my younger days I was a fan of a shared universe fantasy anthology series of books called Thieves’ World and ol’ Enas Yorl was one of the characters from that series. He was kind of a shadowy, lurking character that years ago I felt matched my own shadowy, lurking presence on the various blogs and whatnot that I frequented. He has kind of cool back-story: uber-powerful, immortal sorcerer who lost a duel with an even more powerful sorcerer centuries before and was cursed to constantly change his form. He had no control over the changes and sometimes he wasn’t even human. So you can see how that would put a crimp in a guy’s social life. Overall though he was one of the least developed characters and was used more as a plot device for others. In all the years I’ve used that name it was recognized exactly twice. Frankly I thought I would have gotten more mileage out of it but I guess those books weren’t nearly as popular as I thought they were. So there ya go.
My Crass Materialism Knows No Bounds August 24, 2010
Posted by Mitchell in Home, Vacation.comments closed
Somebody Send the iPod Toting Zombies After Me*
On the trip we spent some time at Jackson Hole which is just outside the Grand Tetons National Park . It’s kind of a tourist trap with TONS of shops all around the town center. Mostly crap but some genuinely interesting stores too. We parked near one that had fur underwear for men & women in the window. Alas, we only went through a fraction of them before getting chased away by rain. Anyway, one of the places we did go into was Wilcox Gallery and much pretty stuff was found therein. Yes, they had the frogs, but those weren’t really what I was interested in. Old and busted: bronze frogs, the New Hotness: bronze kittehs! <-You go clicky nao!
The artist is Jan Rosetta and she does lots of very nice sculptures of stylized animals. Now, the frogs notwithstanding I generally don’t go in for animal art particularly, but I really dig her stuff, and I’ll always love the kitties. I almost bought that bobcat mask but at 2.17 SLB’s I just couldn’t justify the expense right now. Particularly not after just buying The Twins the week before. I have to impose some semblance of fiscal restraint on myself. So, no sale. Yet.
Later on in the trip we hit a place just outside of Monument Valley called Twin Rocks Trading Post and it’s a couple shops with a restaurant there and we stopped for some pictures and a leg stretch. One of the stores was nice jewelry store and we looked around for a bit. Again, I generally don’t go for the silver & turquoise stuff that you see so often around the southwest but a small rack of rings caught my eye and I asked to look at them closer. A couple of them really interested me and one of those fit perfectly. As it was only .67 SLBs I went ahead and bought it.
Navajo Bling:
I got your "Fiscal Restraint" right here
Oh, and after we left Twin Rocks we started passing a lot of these little stands where other Navajos set up their jewelry displays waiting for rich tourists to pass by and stop to buy their stuff. Monument Valley is entirely on reservation land and there were lots of these stands out there. I felt kinda bad that I’d already spent my Mad Money buying a ring at a fancy store instead of one of these roadside stands.
More Leathery Goodness August 22, 2010
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I’m Getting My Boots!
Yes, those gorgeous, expen$ive, custom form-fitted Wesco Harness boots I’ve been lusting after.
This will be my Big Christmas Gift from my parents this year. Since they take three months to make it will be almost Christmas until I can get them so that actually works pretty well. 😀 Oh, and there’s the added stipulation that they get wrapped up and put under the tree when they arrive so there’s still some excitement on Christmas day.
And here’s something that might interest the ladies – Wesco is introducing four new styles of boots just for you! I like these the best:
They’re so new they aren’t even on the website yet. Starting price is only $549. What a bargain!
I Heart Toyota August 20, 2010
Posted by Mitchell in Home.comments closed
When I got back from vacation I had thick wad of mail to go through and since most of it was junk it took a while to go through it all. One letter was from Toyota Motors and it looked like another “time for your regular maintenance” yada yada so I ignored it for a while. When I did open it up it was actually a notification of a warranty extension that covers a specific malfunction, and if you get this malfunction within a certain mileage/time-frame Toyota will do it for free. I thought “that’s nice, but I’m pretty sure I already had this fixed”. Well, I read on and it turns out they will reimburse you if you already had it done and could provide the service record for it. Of course I didn’t save the service record, or if I did I don’t know where I put it, but the local Toyota dealer where I had it done surely does and a quick phone call confirmed that yes, indeedy they do have that record and yes, indeedy it is the problem referenced in the letter, and yes, they will be happy to print it out for me. I seemed to recall that this was a pretty big ticket item and asked the guy how much I had paid for it. “Almost three thousand dollars”.
SWEET!
***Update*** Aww. The guy didn’t look at the records right I guess – it was right at $2100. Still, a most goodly chunk o’ change.
What I Did On My Vacation August 16, 2010
Posted by Mitchell in Art, Knitting.comments closed
I mostly worked on The Amazing Technicolor Möbius Dreamscarf:
It took two skeins (plus a bit more) of a really nice Japanese yarn that’s 70 / 30 wool & silk.
Better lit closeups below the fold
This Looks Good August 13, 2010
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Really, really good. Check it out:
I hope that’s actually indicative of the game play and not just cut-scenes. Because if it is – dayum. That looks pretty amazing.
The Best Picture of the Trip August 11, 2010
Posted by Mitchell in Art.comments closed
Got this in the early morning of the last day (clicky to embiggen):
Most of the significant features in Monument Valley have names, and as near as we can tell from the map that we had this is “Mitchell Mesa”. The day before we drove through the park on the main roadway (highway 163 I think) on the way to our stop for the night. This day we went back to check out the other main road that crossed that highway and this was right next to it. We had a beautiful sunrise but unfortunately there were a lot of clouds that blocked out the sun as it rose. When we pulled over to get a picture of this it was lit up like a candle, but in just a minute the sun was covered up again. We were just about to leave when I noticed that the sun was coming back out and I parked the car and hopped out. You can see from the shadow on the left side of the picture that it was already starting to cloud over again. It pretty much stayed that way for the rest of the time we were there.
Much like our trip to Alaska the year before almost the entire trip was dogged by clouds, so even though I took over 200 pictures most aren’t very good. I’ll put up a few and talk about how things went.
I’m Back! August 11, 2010
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Did I miss anything?
Am still digesting the trip, details and pics to follow. Dad summed it up pretty good: “I’m glad we went, but I wouldn’t do it again.” Amen.
The Center of the Anomaly 
