Last day of our ghost-town road trip. Home tonight (maybe tomorrow morning)? It has been amazing.

DETOUR!

Drove (back) all day yesterday from Hawthorne, Nevada to Klamath Falls, OR, to be with my sister while she gave birth to my very first nephew, Calvin William Lange.



The nurses were worried for a little while that baby Calvin wasn't getting enough oxygen, so he had lots of hands poking and prodding him for a while (in this pic, one of the nurses is attaching a monitor to his weensy foot). Turns out he just didn't feel like crying (a sign of clear lungs) when he came into the world. He felt more like squeaking, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

Back in Hawthorne tonight, Death Valley tomorrow and then, hopefully, back up to Klamath Falls to spend a little time with the new baby (who has a huge dimple in his chin, just like my sister!).

Off to find some ghost towns in Nevada! See you in a week.

Peeling off blobs from meg on Vimeo.

Testing out Steve's camera, which he is graciously letting me borrow for an upcoming ghost-town road trip through Nevada and Death Valley. Those are blobs of silicone I'm peeling off of a painting.

Hybrid, 1997, 9' X7'

Love this painting by Jenny Saville.

Someone I just met told me today that I look like an elf. Then he said, "Yeah, you've definitely got a forest glow about you."

I think this is the best compliment I've ever received. If I could choose one thing to exude, it would be a forest glow.

This Awesome Indian Music Video...



...reminds me a lot of MJ's Smooth Criminal video.

Zach Klein, Monkeys

Zach introduced me to radiolab during our Norway road trip last month, and I finally got around to listening to my first (-since-then) episode this morning. It was about monkeys, in zoos, and I really enjoyed it.

When I got home from work a few minutes ago, I checked out Zach's blog and discovered that this cool person is making a painting of him. So I started scanning his blog, and found the following (which I love!):

Tony Matelli - Old Enemy, New Victim.

That's all. It's just been a fun day of zach and monkey cycles.

E-mail from my sister today:

Listen to the description of this book (by The New Yorker):

Davis's whimsical, seemingly eventless fictions, with their looping motifs and love of obliquity, fall somewhere between prose poetry and Venn diagrams. In her new collection, Kafka agonizes over the menu for a dinner date ("One man fights at Marathon, the other in the kitchen"), and death is approached as a grammatical problem ("Is he, once he is dead, still 'he'?"). While some stories follow a nominal plot—two academics strolling through Oxford is as wild as it gets—others are not even a sentence long. ("Index Entry" reads, in its entirety, "Christian, I'm not a.") Strung together, they gain momentum as tiny epics of paranoia and ennui, each a snapshot of "a moment of madness during which the people could not bear the frustration of their lives."

Whoa.

Friends in the news (late post):

Scott got a hilarious write-up in the Oregonian for his show at Ogle. Scroll down to the heading "To be or not to be" and read the comments, if you're interested.

Also check out The Lonesome Crowded West, a very flattering article about Matt and his films in the Willamette Week.

Yesterday, while working at the crow factory, I came up with a list of things I don't have but want. Here they are:

1. A cheese grater.
2. Comprehensive health insurance. And/or, more specificially, I would like to be able to get my bi-yearly exams and yearly teeth-cleanings at an affordable-for-me price.
3. Dining room chairs. We don't have any in my house!
4. Some indoor plants.
5. New running shoes.
6. A bike light.
7. Stronger wrists. They're giving me problems again after a bowling trip last week -- but I scored a 126 and a 130 in my first two games, so I think it may have been worth it.
8. Baking soda. I'm going to make banana bread. Picked this up at the store on my way home last night.
9. A piano.
10. A single-person tent and backpacker stove.
11. Some ziploc baggies. I'm so good at re-using these, I think one box might last me a whole year.
12. A rug for my bedroom that matches Sadie's hair color.

Look at this crazy animal found in Portland today!!



Apparently it's a Patagonian cavy? Nuts!

via Oregonlive