greetings from MARCH of 2026. love the huge gap in time between posts- keeping that consistency is key. My first midwest winter has been a different beast than what it used to be ‘back east’. the days and nights are grey and the temps get so goddam low and windy, making the effort to see people out in public has this added challenge on top of it. Luckily there’s a bar 4 minutes from my place, so I can walk/stumble over there for Bell’s when i desire.
a friend of mine has a cabin up in RURAL wisconsin (so not milwaukee or madison) where tina and i joined up with others to spend valentines weekend out there. I feel like in that amount of isolation, you could really get some crazy projects going.
the crack of the beer echoed across the frozen lake
when i moved here, i was finally able to secure a small group of blokes to catch a few football games with me. was it an excuse to get out and drink/party with strangers? maybe. we also developed a fun drinking game with just a single dice, sometimes two dice. They’re all board gamers, so the rules came more complex as the drinks continued. I think the toy car came out near the end, almost like a “spin the bottle car, who ever it lands on buys a shot” kind of night. FUN
if you’re wondering, its a small volvo 240
I’ve taken the bike out twice this year (with a ton of warm gear on) but that’s been great. The city is more bike friendly than boston ever was.
nice lil’ composition I saw on my bike ride back from the barber, had to turn around to get it and I only had my phone camera on me :(
A new micro-hobby has been Magic the Gathering. Bought a ton of cards off ebay for cheap. Most of them are just common or uncommon cards, but just being able to get an evening started by making a cruddy deck has been really fun, alto I’m no good at it. The good thing about that though, is that I don’t want to be good at it! just hanging out at bars/breweries to sip and tap cards.
getting my ass kicked in Magic the Gathering again- I’ve played about 20 games since stopping in highschool, and i’ve won about 4 of those..
I had a great time working on that “Sea Brown/ Charlie Brown” piece in graphite. I used to work in graphite fairly often in college, and coming back to it on my own terms was delightful. Working on vellum to get that extra grit was a trick i learned from my old professor John Roman. I did the initial sketch in redblue pencil on bristol, then stapled a piece of tracing vellum on top to get some final lines in. I kind of like the backlit image more than the final piece i posted, so here YOU go.
Starting to plateau with the CRT nonsense. I have a good library of PS2 and Gamecube games, there’s not a lot that i’m looking out for other than maybe some Tekken. I took apart my PS2 Fatty to clean off the dust. traded it in for a slim and found out quickly that the DVD player was too finicky, so I picked up a super cheap DVD player on eBay, and…yeah back to square one with that. Shouldn’t have traded it in!!!
Tina found YuYu Hakusho: The Movie on DVD some time ago and it’s pretty good but the voice actors seem to be different than the regular show’s crew. There were a handful of really cool fight scenes that make it worth watching if you’s a fan.
Heres hoping in the springtime I get out more: get to more local shows on the bike, check out some new bars in my area, make some new friends!
we love parlor games over arcade games. Games like “Ice Cold Beer” have a replay value that’s hard to describe. Dexterity or skill based games hit different, especially when you’re a few beers deep
That’s about it for now- I was toying with the idea of doing a mailing list because I really hate using instagram now, it’s absolutely not what it used to be, plus social media has been eroding my spirit the past few years. I could just post here and send y’all an email when i have something worthy drafted.
Albums worth cheng out in the meantime:
Déjà Vu - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. 1969
Wiretap Scars- Sparta. 2001
Moon Safari- Air. 2003