2005
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We found John Sumner at the art fair. We totally missed him the first day and we have a giclee of his, Moe, that we got in his gallery in Sonoma, CA.
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We were struck again this year by the photography of Edward Holland. We came really close in previous years to getting one of his items. He’s got an amazing eye and produces these striking, vivid photos.
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I was struck by the work of Liang Wei from Washington. He had a number of pieces that I really liked. Tammy wasn’t quite as taken with him as I. Hope to see more from him.
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We really like the work of Jay Long as well. The art is striking. Unfortunately for us it was all framed in oak, and we really, really don’t like oak.
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Andrew Carson was there showing his wind sculptures. He’s added color to them now which neither of us cared for. I thought it made the sculpture look cheap and wrong. The piece of his that we have in our backyard has remained unmolested, but the other stuff I didn’t like as much.
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We were awestruck by the work of Kristin DeSantis. From a distance it looked like it may be stained glass. As you approach it you realize it’s actually metal work. She cuts out amazing works in aluminum and then applies oils to it. Great stuff. Definitely a contender for a purchase this year, but it’s also very expensive.
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Keith Grace had some very interesting mixed media work. His process is interesting and produces some very intriguing pieces. His work is definitely a strong contender to grace our walls shortly. It would be hard to pick which one though.
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I found the interesting juxtaposition of elegant art and geometric patterns in Suzy Scarborough’s work very intersting. Tammy didn’t care for her work so it’s not something we look further at. But, I though it was really interesting. Particularly the bigger items.
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Tammy drew us over to the work of Bruce Dunlap, which really surprised me. I asked her why since it’s not her type of art and she said she’s trying to expand her horizons, in small steps. I liked it, definitely worth a gander.
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We really like the work of Daniel Ng. Our neighbors actually have a painting of his in their house. The colors are nice and vibrant, very good.
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I’m always drawn to the kinetic sculpture of Jeffrey Zachmann, who also happens to be the only Minnesota artist that I’m highlighting. He does these great motion pieces. I don’t think I would get one, but I can sit and look at them for a long, long time.
Mazie's 2-month Checkup
Mazie had her 2-month checkup today with the pediatrician. I arranged my schedule so that I could go as well. We really liked the pediatrician that we met with. He was recommended by our neighbors who have two kids.
Mazie is doing great. She’s a big girl! She’s 97th percentile for both height and weight, and 75th percentile for head circumference. She’s already 24" long and tipping the scales at 13 lbs 1 oz. (For reference, she was 7 lbs 11 oz and 21" long at birth.)
The hardest part of the visit were the shots. Mazie got 4 different shots, after we confirmed they were single dose vaccines that contained no mercury. The nurse had me hold her hands and talk to her to comfort her. The shots were done in like 5 seconds, but Mazie let out one heck of a yelp when she got poked. I picked her up right away and held her tightly in my arms and she relaxed pretty quickly, and then even fell asleep. I felt really bad for her – poor little girl.
She’s been having a hard time tonight, residual effects from the vaccinations. After a good nights sleep I think she’ll feel better.
Make Minneapolis Bicycle Friendly
A few months ago I sent a suggestion to the mayor of Minnetonka to request that they work with the League of American Bicyclists to get Minnetonka the designation of a Bicycle Friendly city. She had someone on her staff look into it but they ultimately decided it would be too difficult to pursue.
In the new flyer from the League I noticed that Chicago had just received this designation. So, I dropped a note to Mayor Rybak of Minneapolis on this topic. Maybe Minneapolis would go for this. If you think this is a good idea, how about sending him a note yourself.
Mayor Rybak,
My name is Jamie Thingelstad and I’m a resident of Minnetonka but work, and have lived, in downtown Minneapolis. I’m also a bicyclist and enjoy commuting back and forth to work on my bicycle using the great trail network that we have in the metro area.
A few months ago I sent an email to Mayor Anderson of Minnetonka suggesting that she seek to have Minnetonka designated a Bicycle Friendly Community by the Leage of American Bicyclists. I am a member of the League of American Bicyclists as well as a member of the local Twin Cities Bicycling Club. Mayor Anderson’s staff looked into the award but were unable to justify the investment.
I noticed that Chicago has now been designated a Bicycle Friendly Community, and that made me think that perhaps Minneapolis would like to seek the same designation. If Minneapolis achieved the designation it would be the first city in Minnesota to do so, and hopefully not the last. I think this would be a fitting achievement for the state that leads the country in miles of “Rails to Trails” paths.
Thank you for your time and consideration, and of course, your continued support of cycling in Minneapolis and the surrounding area.
Sincerely,
Jamie Thingelstad
Mazie at 8 Weeks
This Tuesday Mazie will be 8 weeks old. It’s time for us to schedule her 2 month appointment. I remember thinking how insane that was. We went from the 2 week appointment and then 6 whole weeks without seeing professional help. How would we do it!? Well, it’s been fine. Mazie is doing great and so are we.
She’s put on a good amount of weight. She’s already well over 12 pounds. This last week in particularly seems to have been a watershed week. She’s been so much more engaging and interactive than ever before. She will smile and play with you for a while. She loves it when you tickle her and play with her while she’s on her changing table. Also, much to the pleasure of Tammy and I she’s actually started to smile at us, instead of randomly at walls and other objects in the house.
She’s been doing well with sleep, although sometimes she puts up a bit of a fuss trying to get to sleep. But once in the bed and snoring away, she does well. She seems to be spitting up a lot more lately than she did at first. I’m guessing that has to do in part with a lot more volume of milk going her way. It’s pretty funny how being a parent pretty much makes all your “eww, gross” reactions go away. A pile of spitup goes all over your shirt, you wipe off the visible stuff and continue on your way, no worries.
She’s a strong girl too. I’ve been holding her up and letting her support her weight with her legs. She can do this for a few seconds at a time and then needs a break. She likes to lean up against me in a standing position for minutes at a time.
That’s all for now. Of course I put up some more photos as well. You’ll notice two pictures of me sleeping with Mazie. This seems to be a not to uncommon occurrence.
Landscaping Wonders
Last year we had the landscaping in front of our house redone completely. We used a small, native landscaping firm called Go Native. Native landscaping means that you only work with plants that are native to your area. The great thing about this, other than being ecologically “correct” is that you end up with landscaping that is lower maintenance. We’ve been loving it, and we know this year will be the “worst” year, if you can call it that. The first year all these native plants spend the majority of work establishing their root systems. Next year, they should all come up very strong. We’ve already had a multitude of flowers. It’s been fun to watch everything come up and develop.
Before, our landscaping was boring and dull. When we sat down with our landscaper she said that with our native plantings we would get a lot of birds and butterflies visiting us. We certainly haven’t been let down. We’ve got a constant array of visitors gracing us with their presence. I love it. See photos with bees harvesting pollen, a great yellow bird that visits us often and a huge monarch butterfly that stopped by.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
I just finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I rifled my way through the sixth installment of the Harry Potter series much faster than the Order of the Phoenix. I found the Half-Blood Prince to be one of my favorite in the series in a very odd way. The story was different than the last five books. Each of them seemed to have a very finite start and finish. The books would start, there would be some very interesting story, and then after a climactic conclusion everyone would head home for the summer. This one had a different feel. It seemed like it was distinctly setting up something big to go down in what everyone expects to be the final, seventh book, in the series.
I was pleased that Rowling didn’t feel a need to make an even longer book than the previous ones. I’m still wondering if we wont get a Harry Potter volume that exceeds 1,000 pages at some point. The story was fun, exciting and I’m not going to ruin the plot and tell you anything about the last 300 or so pages, other than to let you know I found it hard to put it down at that point. I’m not one to rifle through hundreds of pages in a book at once, but I just had to know what was going to happen next.
Now I need to go search the Internet to see what people are guessing will be in the next and final, volume 7!
Uptown Art Fair Conclusion
Tammy and I returned to the Uptown Art Fair after having previewed yesterday. We brought Mazie with us this time, so we went early to avoid the heat. It was another great day and the crowd was immense even at 10am.
We took a walk through the area we like the most and saw some more artists that we really liked. Tammy also found a custom purse by Laura Maclay that she really liked and decided to get.
Further artist highlights (again in no order):
As I predicted yesterday we returned to Keith Grace to make our annual purchase. We got the dog painting that you see in this post. It’s a great piece and we really liked his technique. He combines collage, acrylics and oils to make these striking, graphic pieces. The collage work also ties back to the subject of the painting as well.
Camera Upgrade: Canon 20D
I’ve been going on and on for a while now with all my friends about how I’m not going to get a new digital camera until I can get one that has no focal length multiplier. (Not familiar with focal link multiplication? Read this.) Unfortunately there is only one camera I would get that doesn’t have a multiplier, the Canon 1Ds Mark II. This camera cost more than the first 3 or 4 cars I owned, substantially more now that I think of it, even if you add them all together!
So today we went to National Camera with every intention of getting a new lens. I still like to support my local camera shops. My workhorse lens is still the kit lens I got with my Digital Rebel (Canon 300D), the 18-55mm rather junky lens. I’ve got other lenses, all universally better than this one, and I shoot a fraction of my shots with them. Makes sense eh? No, it doesn’t.
I wanted something in the range I have now, but longer, like 80mm and fast for low light conditions. Of course, the lens that fits this bill like no other is the Canon USM IS 17-85mm. A great lens on it’s own, and it just so happens it’s also the upgrade kit lens for the 20D package.
So I picked up the 20D to play with this lens, and one thing led to another and I left the place with the Canon 20D kit with the 17-85mm lens. Yes, I realize this has the same focal length multiplier as my existing Rebel, but man do I love it so far. I justified this by the big “discount” I got on the lens since I bought it with the camera. Again, makes sense right? No, it doesn’t.
This camera is a huge upgrade from the Rebel, I’m loving it. Read a review if you want the details. The feel of the camera is stunning and the DIGIC II processor is definitely an upgrade after shooting for a couple of years with the previous generation. I expect I will get razed for a few days for this unplanned, and previously unacceptable upgrade. However, it’s a small price to pay for such a great camera.
Uptown Art Fair Preview
Tammy and I spent the afternoon at the Uptown Art Fair. This is by far our favorite art fair in the Minneapolis area. We have made a tradition of going to it every year and finding something for our anniversary gift since we were married just before the art fair. Our visit today was great. The sun was out and the temperatures were in the high 80’s with not a chance of rain and a slight breeze.
I hate to start with a negative or concern, but we were both struck that there seemed to be a marked increase in vendors and food this year. There is still plenty of art, but a big Avon tent, a Court TV spectacle and several other vendor areas seemed to give more focus to the fair part than the art part. I considered for a moment the horrible turn for the worse that the Taste of Minnesota has taken in recent years, and I truly hope the Uptown Art Fair doesn’t follow in it’s foot steps.
There were artists from around the country showing. Here are some notes on what drew our attention (in no particular order):
We’ll be back to the art fair tomorrow morning to find one of these that we really fall for.
Now I've Made .Text Unhappy
I’ve modified and specialized this website so much it’s rather ridiculous. I use .Text for the site, and it’s open source which is fun since you can change things, which I’ve done extensively. Now however I seem to have introduced a bug that keeps me from editing any post that is already published, the page throws an exception.
Trying to dig through and find what’s causing this is going to be, well, interesting. One more incentive to move to a new code base that is still being supported. Ugh!
Update
Actually it seems I’ve only broken it so that any post I create in a browser other than Internet Explorer, like Firefox, cannot be opened for editing again. This sucks, as Firefox is the “Peoples Browser”, but I think I can live with it for a while.
del.icio.us
I just discovered del.icio.us. Del.icio.us is a social bookmark manager. What’s that you say? Essentially a way for you to manage your bookmarks across any number of computers using a tagging metaphor like Flickr. And, even better, you can see what other people like that you like, etc.
I’ve added the last ten things I’ve tagged on del.icio.us to the right hand navigation bar of my website for fun.