To the land of Saint Francis

Me here. I'm heading to San Francisco.

The short of it is that I am involved with an Entrepreneurship program and through that I got some funding to visit this mecca of start-ups and moderate weather.

I am really excited about the entire this because people have been telling me to visit it (and that I will love it) for years and now I can finally test that theory.

I am also a bit worried though, because I am supposed to meeting with a bunch of different people involved with start-ups and I haven't heard back from anyone yet. Also I don't have a place to stay for the time I am there. Or really any back up plan if my meetings fall through. Also I leave tomorrow.

But hey, you only live one, right—what's the worst that can happen?

RE: previous posts and the future

So thinking back to my new years resolution to "blog more" and my feeble attempts at documenting my daily life, I think a change is needed.

Basically my problem is that I don't think that just because you can generate content, you should, or alternatively, if you are going to put something out there, at the very least it should be engaging, if not innovative or nuanced in some way.

As much as I enjoyed writing my snippets of my life, I don't think it is terribly interesting to anyone besides me (and even that hasn't been terribly captivating, as you may have noticed I stopped doing it a few days ago). So with that said, I am temporarily suspended blogging until I can come up with a better way to go about doing it—I might resume tomorrow or maybe a month from now, but I will come back.

In the mean time, if you are interested in beer, I have actually been writing worthwhile things here so check it out.

Also, my 360 project is still going on, I just haven't gotten around to posting the images yet, but they will be showing up here in the next day or two.


-peace
DAnley

January 8

Not much happened today

-blogged a lot

-pillow fort of epic (and I mean epic) proportions

-watched the new Sherlock episode "The Hounds of the Baskerville"

I did, however, catch up on some beer bloggin' so check it out.

January 8

This post was posted a bit late because I was just plum exhausted and decided it was more important for me to sleep. That, however, is the award you get for having something hanging over your head for a few months and finally the relieving the pressure—you get to say fuck it, I'm out

Anyway, that was the reason for my lack of post yesterday, not for lack of cool things done—I actually had a pretty busy day.

It started with a trip to one of the best (if not the best) places in Cleveland: West Side Market. The market, housed in what looks like an old train station, is one of the few remaining large-scale public owned farmer's markets in the United States. Featuring over 100 vendors selling products ranging from fresh-from-farm produce and daily butchered meet to imported artisanal cheeses and old world bread, the market is a sight to behold. One of the coolest facts of the entire place is that since the market is 100 years old (2012 is its centennial), many of the vendors have been coming for 75 years or longer, meaning that every visitor has their own favourite vendors and visit the same stand a few weeks in a row and you will become a "regular."

Though the available bounty is incredible in breadth, my purchases this time were limited to some bagels and rolls because I will unfortunately not be around my current locale for terribly long and I didn't want anything to go bad. My companions, however, loaded up on a bunch of different items; cheeses, bacon, fresh veg, breads, and cilantro-lime sausages (many of which became a dinner of Bánh mì, or vietnamese sandwiches).

Shortly afterwards we headed over to an awesome craft beer destination called the Bier Markt (for a description of it's awesomeness, click here) where, after many a musing, we decided to purchase a make-your-own six pack from the bottles available. This ended the journey in the land of Cleve, but upon returning back to home base, the purchases were not. We ended up walking to the honest-to-god General Store in town for a few more supplies, including a winter seasonal pack of Sarnac Breweries beer (look for reviews soon on my beer blog)

After this, my day became relatively staid; I mostly just did some work in my studio and returned my mountain of required reading for my essay. I did have a great dinner of sandwiches (as mentioned above) and later watched the new episode of the BBC One show Sherlock, A Scandal in Belgravia—a show that if you're not currently watching, you should be.


-peace 

January 6

The last (hopefully) of a string of absolutely exhausting days. On the plus side, my paper is now done and my semester is over.

It wasn't so much that I dislike my topic, or the class, or even doing the research, it was just the actual writing down that caused me intense stress and disquiet. For the record I loved the class, and the professor who taught it is probably my favourite. If you are curious what my paper was about, check it out here*.

In other news, had another entrepreneurial meeting and I think I have figured out what new direction I will be taking my project. So that's something to work out now.

Also, tomorrow, pictures will return! triumphantly!

-peace

*the site is flash based so I can't link directly but click BUILDINGS > scroll down to the MOBILE subheading > click MDU (Mobile Dwelling Unit)

January 5

Looonng day.

I think my entrepreneurial venture is a precipice after which it will change it's course significantly.

Additionally, I have started designing a art/architecture project I have tentatively called "Global Information Box." More details forthcoming.

Finally, probably what consumed most of my day was reaching about modern architecture for approximately 8 hrs, in preparation for  my ten page final paper due tomorrow.

final thoughts: dreams are weird, man.

January 4

shit-ty day.

had a hot pastrami sandwich for lunch today = awesome
my entreprenurial scholars programme started today = good
I failed a class for the first time in my life = not so good
I was informed I my conduct made people uncomfortable in their workplace and was reprimanded = worse

realising also, the very little amount of time I have until my essay on modern architecture (to put it very simply) is due
also went grocery shopping

so tired...

January 3

less than 2 hrs of sleep = wake up feeling dead as I head to the airport.
travel itself was uneventful though (besides the plethora of marines and infantry I saw) – I heard one guy inform another that was because people had to head back to base today, which makes sense.

the town has got a lot of snow, it was snowing pretty hard when I arrived but it petered out later. Rest of the day was pretty lazy, cleaned the mold out of my fridge, ate minestrone, and learned how to play fluxx

winter term project starts tomorrow, essay due friday already busy.

it's good to be back

January 2

Well, today's my last day with the fam.

It began with going to my brother's uni to check out the library while he headed to an interview for a summer research job. Unfortunately, his interviewer was a no show and the library was closed, I just hung around reading about architecture in a promenade.

Later, I met up with some family friends and saw Sherlock Holmes 2—my verdict, beginning was weak, and it's not the first movie, but on the whole, solidly fun. The problem with this is that we forgot where we parked and it took us twenty minutes to find the car using electronic-door-opening ecolocation.

To end the day, I headed with my brother to play a short (haha... 7 hours?) one-off of White Wolf's Vampire, the Masquerade.

Now it's mad late and I have to pack because I'm leaving early tomorrow.

not again.

New Beginnings

Well, it has certainly been a long time since I posted anything substantial to this blog—just under two years to be exact. Anyway that is something I am looking to change.

Last year I made a New Years resolution to blog more. First of all I was going to clean up this blog, and move it back in the direction of just a food blog. Secondly, I was going to start an Art blog to deal with all the art that would be vacating this blog and lastly I was going to start a beer blog with the lofty goal of reviewing 52 beers over the course of the year.

To cut a long story short, it was kind of a disaster. I started the art blog but didn't really follow through on it. My beer blog was all back posted at the end of the year and this one, well, it should be fairly self-evident how well that worked.

Anyway, rather than live my life in the past and trying again to clean up this blog this year and then move forward, I have decided to, in the immortal words of Tom Cruise in Risky Business, say "Fuck it." Okay so those weren't his exact words, but I take it as artistic licence—the sentiments are the same. Rather than constantly feeling like I needed to catch up on all my blogs before I could start doing new stuff I am going to just try starting with a clean slate.

So here is my resolution for 2012. This year I will blog more. But unlike last year, I don't just want blog "more"as an abstract ethereal concept but specifically I want have the following plans:
 - Get back in the habit of doing #selfportraitfridays and posting them here
 - Complete a 365 photo a day project
 - Similarly, i would like to keep a daily blog (even if it is just a sentence or two) for the next 365 days
 - Complete 26 beer reviews over the course of the next year
 - Over the next month bring my art blog up to date with all my latest projects and actually keep it current

--
So that's my plan, those are my goals, and here is day One. I am not sure how well this is going to work, but I am going to try my damnedest to keep up with it.

Catch ya on the flipside

-pica