The Force is strong in this hoody

Check out this hoody - hot off the Industrial Light and Magic presses and just in time for the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars - perhaps you've heard of it?

It features the Star Wars logo on the front...



and a nice montage of characters comprising a 30 on the back.



Thanks and big ups to Spaghetti!

So my French isn't that good...

...but I think I know the gist of what they want.



We saw this classic piece of Americana on the back of an 18-wheeler north of Austin.

Interesting title regarding very tall plants

My wife was driving around the school where she teaches one day and saw a pretty amazing plant, and she couldn't wait to show me.



This thing is crazy! It looks fake, but it's the real deal. I knocked on the door to see if they minded us getting a picture of it, and the lady (who turned out to be very nice) gave us the full rundown of it. They picked it up out in West Texas...somewhere...and it has just taken off. It's either Agave or a Century Plant...which look like they are practically the same thing.

At the time of this picture, it was about 18 - 20 feet tall, and should be blooming in a few weeks.

These cookies are LAME

I love chocolate...and peanut butter...and cookies! You would think that a combination of all three would be great, right?

Not necessarily.

We tried some Reese's Peanut Butter Cookies (far left cookie) on a recent trip. The taste was okay to alright, but what sent me over the edge was the packaging.



14 cookies?

Are these cookies so amazing that they require cushioning above and beyond the standard cookie, which of course necessitates a lower number of cookies per box? No freaking way. Big waste of money. I'll stick with Oreos, or better yet, plain sandwich cookies that manage to cram 1000 in a bag.

Just what we need as summer approaches....

We built a deck in our yard so we can hang out, have parties, whatever. I've always wanted a chimenea for cold nights or S'mores (regular or Peeps), but I didn't want something that someone could accidentally brush up against and toast themselves.

We went over to some friends' house and we had a great time around their fire pit. "Not too shabby!" we thought, so we found one and picked it up.

It's best used in the dark.



Here's a shot with the flash, and you can see our protective measures in the background. Fire + wooden deck == Safety First!



We live next to a green belt with plenty of firewood, or so I thought. On our first foray out for wood we stuck around the back fence, where we found wood but it basically sent smoke signals directly to the neighbors' porch.

Forced to punt, I looked around for anything ready to burn and remembered that we had a lot of cedar planks left over from our playscape bridge wall, so I chopped some of those up. Next time we're at the farm we'll pick up some mesquite.

Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch

Waaaaay back in March we went on a safari...outside San Antonio. Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch is a huge game preserve where you drive along a road that meanders through various habitats looking at animals you don't normally see in Central Texas.

You can also buy bags of high-protein/carb alfalfa pellets to toss out for a lot of the animals to ignore. Seriously, what's up with all the animals eating before we got there? I guess that's what you get when you're at the back of a parade of cars all feeding the animals out the windows.

I think the most exotic animals we saw were some strange deer-like things with what looked like fuzzy, thick horns. Whoops! I forgot that picture. The most rewarding time was actually feeding a giraffe by hand, and letting our boys feed it too - definitely not an everyday occurrence.



Once you go through the vehicle tour you end up back at the beginning of the reserve where you can get out and eat, visit the aforementioned giraffe area and see a selection of birds, monkeys and a goat petting zoo area. We brought quite a bit of the food back with us to this area, but the goats were more interested in the paper bags than the food itself!

Model Fight: Maison de Roulement 003

I've been fiddling with the wheel and tire design. I admit that having a traditional inflatable-style wheel borders on the ridiculous for holding up something this heavy, but in the Bizarro World, tire roll on building.



I Photoshopped two layered renderings to show the wireframe - with SketchUp's default rendering it's hard to see the curvature.

Model Fight: Maison de Roulement 002

I'm working on a window treatment and some artsy effects around the edges.





I was going to put in a scale Letterman Digital Arts Center, but I can't find the model anywhere.

Model Fight: Maison de Roulement

I've been thinking about something for the past couple of days. I've had an image in my head about a huge apartment building that's wheeled and rolls around certain places.



I've also been thinking of some backstory to it as well as some ongoing stories about the adventures that some of the residents will have. Who knows, this might turn into a longer project? I just have to make sure I keep it different from the Crimson Permanent Assurance building in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.