Pink Glove Dance

Way to be creative St. Vincents Hospital in Portland.

Ian strikes again!

Ian must have found my camera...

this was the end of the metric show

The Means' feed Chris.

So before Caitlin left she told Kyle and Regan Means to "feed him" referring to me. Now what most of you don't know is that the Means family kitchen gets very little use, so she picked the wrong family to ask to feed me. But alas! They did. Saturday night they feed my need for new music, and my sweet tooth. To be fair, Caitlin never did qualify WHAT they were to feed me. We all went to the Metric concert and Band of Skulls opened for them. I have never heard either band, well a little bit of Metric. So my review: Band of Skulls is way less scary than they sound, and they were pretty great! Metric is way more rowdy than their name may suggest. I'm not really sure what it is that their name does suggest, but...whatever! Both bands were killer and put up a great show. Then according to Means family concert tradition, the after show snack was a dozen Krispy Kreme and a Coke!this was band of skulls

this is me being a monster and kyle doing air quotes

Thanksgiving!!

This year, like last, we spent our Thanksgiving day with Kyle and Regan and we made Cornish Game Hens. Last year we meant to make them but ended up making young hens, which were nothing more young chickens. So that was funny, but Kyle nailed it this year. We had a great time, a friend of mine from Portfolio Center joined us too, and the Brockmans. The great thing was that it was Thanksgiving and we got to eat, play games, and watch movies with our closest Atlanta family. Who doesn't love some of that?! That sad part was that it was the last time Caitlin will see people until we visit. Which I hope to plan for this coming summer. I really didn't take too many photos, but here are a couple.

Caitlin goes home.

So this morning...after 1 and a half hours of sleep, I took Cait to the airport so she could fly home. We were at the airport so early, the place was basically empty, no people, no cars, creepy. Caitlin got to say goodbye to Gunnar, we got in the car and left at 3:05 am, got to the check in counter 30 minutes before they even opened, had a romantic breakfast on the floor and then I saw her off around 4:30.

There is no place like home.

Safe travels Cait!

Eerie empty parking lot.

The Biltmore.

The Biltmore house is BANANAS! It is the real deal, the Vanderbilts had to build a temporary railroad to get the supplies to the build site. One person said it best to me, "Biltmore is the real thing from back when they weighted their money!" Also, I got a new toy, a LensBaby! Caitlin and I have always (since we knew of Asheville and the Biltmore) wanted to visit, and the Biltmore is all decorated for Christmas, so we made it a point to get out there before we moved back home. You are not allowed to take any photos inside the house, but you can take as many as you want on the outside. So here are a few from the outside.There is a winery on the grounds also, they do free wine tastings. So, yeah, we stopped by there for a while. It was pretty cool. Here are a couple pictures we got on our way out. The house with Christmas trees in front, and the lit sign at the entrance.In other news: An Asheville local told me that the town of Asheville, which has only a handful of breweries, just took some Beer Capital title. I'm sure the people of Portland are super mad. But I figured, well, I'm here, I might as well sample some local taste. We partook for dinner and a brew at a little place called Jack of the Wood. And it was delicious.

Last chance to Asheville.

Last Saturday Caitlin and I went on a day trip. We went to Asheville North Carolina. They say it is a lot like Portland. It is. Early in the morning we left our place and got to watch the sun rise over the water at the South Carolina Georgia border. Pretty.Once we got into Asheville we realized that it was the day of the towns Holiday Parade. So we saw horses and a lot of people lining the streets. We did a lot of walking around and ate lunch at Mayfel's, they have THE BEST grilled cheese sandwiches, no joke!And then there is this guy, a street drummer. And some idiot "cleaning up" by painting over some perfectly good graffiti.

The artist

Here is a link to Sylvie Lansdowne's glass work. http://www.sylviebeads.com/

Fire Friday

So we have a friend named Sylvie and she does glass work. Mainly she makes glass beads and mermaids. They are cool but I don't have any photos of them here.

Sylvie working it!

The flame was blue, and when you put the glass into it, it turned red and that makes it extremely difficult to see the glass as you work it. So, they have these totally weird glasses that you wear to kill that red flame. When you put them on a few things happen. One, your self esteem plummets. Two, you laugh at each other because they look stupid. Three, you cannot see the red flame, it stays blue, and that was cool. Four, it makes you want to take photos to honor that moment forever.

Regan, in the weird glasses.

Me, looking awesome, in the weird glasses.

Caitlin, rocking the weird glasses.

And Kyle, giving you the over-the-glasses-look, in the weird glasses.

The glass studio is in this big artist complex that also has painters and multimedia artists and a theater and this, a special effects studio. CREEPY!

Looks a bit odd to me...

Thrashers Thursday

So I was given a set of four free tickets to see the Thrashers play the Boston Bruins and took some of the guys from my small group. A photographer that I worked for a lot was kind enough to share his season tickets with me. Thank you Greg Miller. www.gregorymillerphotography.comThis is Keith, Eric, Kyle, and well, myself.

The Thrashers played a great game against the Bruins. So the Thrashers were losing, and with only 4.0 seconds left they tied it up. The game went into a 5 minute sudden death OT. Nobody scored! So off to the shoot-off. The bruins took us out in the shoot-off. So sad. This has been the week of Atlanta overtimes. Hawks game on Monday: OT, Thrashers game on Thursday: OT, Falcons game on Sunday (that we were not at): OT! If you read all this you deserve a little video of a very self important woman on a Zamboni. We don't know who she thinks she is.