Locust Bloom

Everything is in bloom! Even the homely locust tree, thorny and scraggly, like the Clint Eastwood of hardwoods, shows off it's beautiful flowers when the conditions are right. It's amazing! I love spring!

Bands I've Seen Live (Hey What Are Blogs For Anyway) :shrug:

An Ongoing List
-musical acts I have seen live, bands or dj's, in clubs or at festivals, the ones I remember anyway...

• Tool x 3
• Melvins
• A Perfect Circle x 2 or 3
• Smashing Pumpkins x 2
• Zwan x
• Fountains of Wayne
• Tori Amos x
• Ben Folds
• Rufus Wainwright
• Willie Nelson
• Gregg Allman
• Ani Difranco x
• Drums and Tuba
• Ween x
• Foo Fighters
• Queens of the Stone Age
• Primus x
• Les Claypool's Flying Frog Brigade
• Dark Star Orchestra x 2
• Jack Johnson x
• Tom Freund
• Kaki King x 2
• Citizen Cope
• Robert Randolph x
• The Word
• Allman Brothers Band x
• The Dead
• Aerosmith
• Jackyl
• Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Garth Brooks
• Spurge x
• Tricky
• Snoop Doggy Dog
• Failure
• Ziggy Marley, et al x
• Blind Boys of Alabama x
• Trey Anastasio
• Keller Williams Incident
• Galactic x
• Jane's Addiction
• Jurassic 5
• NIN
• Pierce Edens x
• 311
• Incubus
• The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
• Talib Kweli
• The Roots x
• Radiohead
• Phil + Friends
• Sonic Youth
• Mars Volta
• Atmosphere
• STS9 x 20 or so
• Big Gigantic x 3
• Dubconscious x
• Collective Efforts
• Prefuse 73
• Aesop Rock
• Dinosaur Jr
• Black Moth Super Rainbow
• DJ Shadow
• DJ Vadim
• Blackalicious
• Gift of Gab x
• Lyrics Born
• Common x
• KRS-One
• GZA
• Burning Spear x
• Telepath x
• Glitch Mob x
• June Panic x 2
• Hammell On Trial
• Gruntruck
• Patti Smith x 2
• Lotus x 2
• Pnuma Trio
• Midnite
• Zakir, Bela, Edgar
• Bela, Edgar
• Yonder Mountain String Band
• Flaming Lips
• Yo Mama's Big Fat Booty Band x
• Xavier Rudd x
• Motion Potion
• Sasha + Digweed
• Beck
• DJ Vadim x
• Two Fresh
• Dieselboy
• Secret Agent 23 Skidoo
• GFE
• Alice In Chains
• Erykah Badu
• Beans
• Big Boi
• Disco Biscuits
• Bassnectar
• Cypress Hill
• Unified Theory
• Bob Dylan
• The Breeders
• Fear
• Liz Phair
• Daedalus
• Snake Oil Medicine Show
• Mike Relm
• RJD2
• DJ Spooky
• Donovan Frankenreiter
• Easy Star All-Stars
• Eliot Lipp
• Ana Sia
• Ep3
• G Love + Special Sauce
• Godspeed You Black Emperor
• Rasputina
• Gov't Mule
• Spam All-Stars
• Living Legends
• JFJO
• Arrested Development
• Lifesavas
• Toubab Krewe
• Afromotive
• Luciano
• Michael Franti + Spearhead
• Mike Doughty
• Soulive
• The Nightwatchman
• The New Deal
• Sonmi Suite
• Sub-ID
• Taj Mahal
• Telefon Tel Aviv
• Toots + The Maytals
• James Brown
• Rusko
• Emancipator
• Bluetech
• EOTO x 2
• The Smithereens
• Nosaj Thing
• The Wailers
• Papdosio
• Particle
• Conspirator x 2
• Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk
• GalaxC Girl
• Karl Denson's Tiny Universe
• North Mississippi All-Stars
• Ozomatli
• Audioslave
• Mofro
• This is art
• Count Bass D
• The Lee Boys
• The Cranberries
• Corey Harris
• Welder
• Sun Ra Arkestra
• Break Science
• The Mahavishnu Project
• Laura Reed + Deep Pocket
• Kung Fu Dynamite
• DJ Bowie (Bowie Van Ling)
• T'n'T
• Eyedea & Abilities
• Matt + Kim
• The Broadcast
• Josh Phillips Folk Festival
• RBTS WIN
• Do It To Julia
• Aaron Wood
• Asheville Horns
• Bayou Diesel
• Supercollider
• Quetzatl

Drill, Baby, Drill

Thursday's post

I've been listening to a lot of Terence McKenna lately, through the Psychedelic Salon podcast. He's an enchanting bard, with great charm and style and vocabulary. Good stuff.
So I found out with a little research today that the Asheville City Buses will not be running on Earth Day. That's right. Asheville will not have public transportation available on Earth Day! What is that about?
I finished the fence. Whoah. I finished the fence. Hey now! It looks awesome, the dogs love it, everybody's happy. It took a long, long time, but I reached my goal, and that feels good. :)
I'll finish this with an original joke:

What do you call an unemployed rastafarian?


















Jah-bless

Octopus

I was taking pictures of some pottery today, so I took a picture of an octopus I made in high school pottery class, probably 1996 or 1997. It was a really nice day, upper 70's and sunny. Other than the amatuer photography, I bought some lumber from Lowe's and mostly assembled the upper gate. More pics to come of the entire fence project.

I worked on the fence this weekend (weekends are Sunday/Monday in my reality). The weather was gorgeous, perfect for outdoor work. Maybe 65 or 70 degrees, mostly sunny, slight breeze; then the wind picked up about 3 pm Monday and thunder announced a storm, with plenty of rain. I managed to reach a big goal, the cross bracing (or stringers) is completely done. Woot! Now I just need to put up the deck boards on 140 feet of fence and make two gates. The end is in sight! Also this weekend I made Shannon a birthday cake, using the german chocolate recipe with chocolate cream cheese frosting. It turned out real nice. She appreciated it.

Wooden Fence

So I've been working on a particular project for many, many months. It's taken much longer than I expected, and was slightly over budget, but it's starting to come together and I'm getting excited. It's a fence for the backyard, made of 8 foot long pressure-treated deck panels that are placed at a 40 degree angle. It's about 6.75 feet tall, dog-proof and private. I still have a fair amount of work to do, including the two gates, but I'd peg the project at 67% done. As Shannon said the other day, (paraphrasing) "If you finish this, it will be the coolest thing you've ever done." It's probably about 230 feet long, with 31 4x4 posts buried 3.5 feet with 80 lb Quikrete per hole. And it's going to be so functional! I imagine beautiful spring evenings, gardening while the dogs run around the yard. I'd like a picnic table and small firepit, too. Those will be added to the list of smaller projects that can finally be worked on once this fence is tackled...