Today's Moment of Happiness - A little TLC

While having some poorman's noodles for lunch at Thai Tom the other day, they started playing TLC. They usually have a mix of stuff playing but that day they played the entire album, CrazySexyCool. For todays moment of happiness it was a toss-up between "Creep"and "Red Light Special". I went with the first cut off the album.

Cool mural

I found this wonderful mural over at Design*Sponge today. I especially like the owl with glow in the dark eyes.

Today's Moment of Happiness - Can I Get a Napkin, Please?

For more information on this mission and many others, check out Improv Everywhere!

The Golden Age of Children's Book Illustrators

Being sick allows for some unfettered internet trawling. One game I play is a mixture of hitting the "Next Blog" button at the the top of Blogger pages and following any interesting links that turn up. Today I stumbled on Nocloo.com and its treasure trove of Children's Book Illustrations - many of which I had not heard of or seen. Here are a bunch of new discoveries:

Here is an example of the work of Umberto Brunelleschi - from the book Contes du Temps Jadis:



A Harry Clarke illustration from Swinburne Selected Poems:


Warwick Goble from The Modern Reader's Chaucer:

Gennady Pavlishin from Folktales of the Amur:


Arthur Rackham is one of my favorites. This illustration for Little Brother and Little Sister was brand new for me, but you can get a good sense of how delicate his art can be:


Check out Nocloo.com for more. They are also offering glycee prints.

Today's Moment of Happiness - Tom and Janice

While looking for a birthday song for my sister (see below) I stumbled across this awesome performance of Tom Jones and Janice Joplin from his live 1969 show "This is Tom Jones". I so wish that I could have been one of those long haired dancing freaks in the background.

Happy Birthday, Paula!

Yesterday was my sister Paula's birthday. Because we are closest in age I have the least problem remembering her date of birth. Unfortunately, I'm still late with the birthday wishes. No surprise there, really :)

Anyway, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Behold Butters the Winnecycle!

According to Ivan, Butters won't officially become a Winnecycle (or a Bikabago) until it's fully loaded down for our trip, but I wanted to see what the title looked like in print.

I don't yet own Butters, but we went down to Angle Lake Cyclery - the only place in Seattle to get a recumbent - where I got on one and pedaled around for the first time. It was kind of scary at first. I didn't fall over or anything, but the shift in body position from vertical to semi-horizontal is off-putting. You have to move your body differently and the turn radius is larger than in a traditional diamond frame upright.

But both Ivan and Dale, the owner of Angle Lake who ran behind me for a while holding on to me while I got the knack, said I did really well for my first time and placed me high up on the learning curve. I was happy with the assessment because this isn't a cheap toy we're buying and I would hate to make the purchase and then discover that I have no aptitude for the style at all. Additionally, it struck me that, putting the trip aside, Butters will need to become my main bike to further justify the cost so I'd damn well better learn to love riding a recumbent. Since Ivan has accepted a position with the Fremont Solstice Parade this spring I'll have a good three months to both acclimate and get into shape as we won't be leaving now until July.

In the meantime, we went ahead and placed and order. A yellow Bacchetta Giro 26 (just like the picture) with a few modifications: wider handle bars; wider, tougher tires to handle the long miles; a rear rack; bottle rack, and clipless pedals (which are both a misnomer and scare the hell out of me.) With luck, it will be ready in a couple of weeks.