Life Cycles

It’s been fun lately celebrating with friends and family new chapter’s in their lives. Wonderfully noteworthy life cycle changes – for example:

*Recently, [via phone] all of Elizabeth’s [my niece] new adventures and accomplishments as she rounds the corner of being a year and a half old, well on her way to the Terrible Two’s.

*Jen & Toby, our dear friends, celebrating the birth of their first child, Paisley, who is the most dear and adorable little thing - great features and hair to boot.

*Chad & Jenny – watching little Jonah turning from a wee little baby into a little boy – so cute!

*Minta!, my dear friend from college getting married. We are so happy for her, but were so bummed to miss the nuptials in person.

*5 Year Anniversary for us, Chad & Jenny and Andy & Meri – whoo hoo; 2002 was a good year!

 The list goes on and on - which is incredible! But then there’s the other side of the chapters and changes in our lives…the end of the life cycles.

I’m not sure many of you know, but Brian’s Grandpa is not doing well. He’s been sick battling another round of cancer. He’s previously, with great effort & determination, come out victorious from these battles. However, it’s returned again, and unfortunately this time we know that Cancer will be the victor.

It’s a terrible thing to watch and experience this process in someone’s life. Especially when that someone is near and dear to your heart. This being the case for not only Brian, but his entire family - which now includes me.

When I met Brian, all four of my Grandparent’s had already passed away, and so adopting his as my own, was not only a joy, but a wonderful new beginning on many levels.

And, now rounding this corner, watching Brian hurt throughout the process and agonize over the day he receives “the phone call” from his parents is horrible. For me personally, it re-opens my previous experiences and is painful at best.

Please pray for us as we endure this time and ultimately when we make the trip to Ohio. Neither is pleasant, but unfortunately necessary in order to celebrate the highlights that life cycles bring.

something to think about . . .

The Historical Conquests of….

 Do your brain and ears a favor and buy/steal/download the new Josh Ritter record aptly titled “The Hisotorical Conquests of Josh Ritter.”  This has been the soundtrack for Leah and I for the past week or so and is constantly blowing our minds.  I love music and I want everyone to love the same music I love (which is a pretty hard feat) but this record is beyond great.  Its easily on my ‘best of 07″ list because its, dare I say, a perfect record.”The Temptation of Adam”, track 4 is this amazing post-apocalyptic love story that makes me nearly cry every time because its such a well written song both lyrically and musically. This is amazing…check it…

Oh Marie if you would stay we could stick pins in the mapOf all the places you thought that love would be foundBut I would only need one pin to show where my love is atIn a top secret location 300 feet under the groundWe could hold each other closeWe’d stay up every nightLook up into the dark and pretend it’s the night skyPretend this giant missle is a old oak tree insteadAnd I’d carve your name in hearts into the warheadOh Marie something tells me things just won’tWork out aboveThat our love would live a half-life on the surfaceSo at night while you are sleepingI hold you closer just becauseAs our time grows short I grow a little nervous 

  He’s here in Atlanta on November 1st… we are going to be first in line.  GO GET IT! 

5 Years Today!

I can hardly believe that today is our 5-year anniversary – wow!  In so many ways it seems as though we were just married last year. However, wistfully thinking back I find myself remembering so many amazing experiences. To have lived through all of these events along our journey together; laughing, crying, loving, worrying, celebrating, speculating and dreaming – it’s exhilerating to think it’s all occured in only five quick years. I can’t help but wonder what the next 5, 10, 15, 20+ will hold for us

 Ain’t love grand? I love you buddy! 

Mas Photografias

I finally got a chance to develop all the film I have shot over the past few weeks. Some are from our trip to Ohio to see my Grandma and Grandpa. Others are me messing around with a new Lomo ring flash as well as some film that turns everything red. I posted them on our flickr page. I hope you enjoy them.

TRA…F*!*….IC!

Somehow when school started around here everyone decided to leave for work/school at the exact same time Leah and I do. Funny how that works. Ok… maybe its not funny at all. In fact it makes me swear a lot. Swearing is not good for the soul. I remember reading some weird article a few years back about the future of traffic population growth in southern California. It made some outlandish comment that one day we’d all pull out of our driveways and be stuck in complete gridlock right there, right out side our drive way.  It was saying that there would be so many cars increasing daily that one day we’d all be stuck with nowhere to go. We’ve moved away from southern California and it never happened while we were there. But somehow, by the power of  the dark lord (not George Bush but rather Lucifer) it is happening now in suburban-hell.  I only drive 14 miles and it takes me 45-50 minutes. I sit in bumper to bumper traffic on a 2 lane country-bumpkin road all the way to the freeway.  It is ridiculous and it is making me ridiculously angry.  There is nothing I can do about it other than wait it out ’till we move and post it here for everyone to know why I’m such a jerk when I get to work in the morning. GRRRRRRRRRRRR…. 

Hatch Show Print

My roommates (Chad and Candy) have come to a realization lately… I’m a huge nerd. (Leah already knew this) I love all things tech and nerdy. From defending Spider-man 3’s goodness as a movie to talking about computer specs like anyone knows what I’m talking about, I am a nerd. As much as i love the digital realm – there is something inspiring about the old-school analog way of doing things. This weekend I learned this through the art of letterpress.This past Saturday Leah and I made our way to Nashville,TN to hang out with our friends Brett and Megan. Brett is a swell dude, and thats reason enough to hang out with him, but he also just happens to be an intern at one of the coolest letterpress/poster shops on the planet – Hatch Show Print. So on Saturday, with camera ready, we met the Miottis and headed up to Hatch.To explain hatch in a few words, here is what you get from the Country Music Hall of Fame website:

If you follow country music, country music history or the history, art and culture of the American South, sooner or later you’re bound to run into the letters, images and unmistakable “look” of Hatch Show Print. We’re one of the oldest working letterpress print shops in America, and over the years our posters have featured a host of country music performers ranging from Hall of Famers Hank Williams, Bill Monroe and Johnny Cash to present-day stars Garth Brooks, Wynonna Judd and Shania Twain.  

I don’t know what more to say other than I remember reading a book about Hatch Show Print at a bookstore in Orange County and thinking “that look is cool… I want to replicate it with a computer.” I had no idea I would ever have the honor of being in the Hatch shop let alone have the pleasure of playing around with the 100+ year old type carved out of wood blocks.When we entered into the shop, the walls were covered with all of the shop’s best work, dating back to 1879. It was so overwhelming, Brett just told me to stand there and take it all in. He was right. There was more amazing design and amazing concert posters on the wall than one human brain could process.After I came out of my awe-inspired coma, Brett began to walk me through the shop. He took me around all the presses, drawers full of type, and shelves filled to the rafters of images carved onto wood and metal blocks. I think he was talking throughout this tour but I don’t remember anything because I was still in a state of complete bliss.I just milled around the shop for about half an hour snapping photos and staring at old amazing prints and blocks. I think the photos can tell the story better than I can with words so check them out here at our flickr site.The coolest part for me was that Brett wanted some help setting type for this company who wanted to use Hatch type in their new add campaign. So brett and I killed about 2 hours of just typesetting and running one-off proofs. And as it turns out the company loved them and we should be seeing them in their new ad campaign very soon.All in all it was an amazing trip. My brain is still recovering from the overload but I am now full of inspiration and ideas. Check out the photos. they tell a better story than I can.

Twitter

My buddy Chad was bustin’ my chops about not updating our blog in a while and to put up a new post here to get “THE MOZ” off the top of the page.  So this is now a new post.

Everyone should get a Twitter page and become my Twitter buddy. I made this plea a few months ago about Tumblr (not to related to Twitter) and a lot of our friends signed up and created Tumblr pages that I check daily. Now here is Twitter.

Twitter is one of those web aps that is rediciulous and crazy and completely addicting. (and if you’re a nerd like me is still easier and more developed than Pownce) In a nutshell its a one sentence micro-blog about what you are doing throughout the day or week. (for more of an explanation read here) The best part is that you can blast a text message to your Twitter page so you don’t even need your computer to update it. Genius.

The reason this all came about and the reason that I am passionate about Twitter today is that our friends Toby and Jen in San Francisco were expecting a baby any day, and when she went in to labor he was Twittering throughout the process. And then when the glorious Paisley Sterrett was born, we living in the dirty south found out about her birth from his twitter page. See… there is a beautiful reason for all this technology. Embrace it.

Come be my friend in the Twitter universe.

Oh…since I am attempting to give you knowledge that will make your life more fun and exciting – do yourself a favor and take a listen to the new Bishop Allen record. Its great.