Tuesday Night Neighbors

After long days (and an all-nighter for Gina) of being digital creatives, Gina & I hit the road. We escorted Felice to yoga, then headed to bread & cup for sandwiches and a beer. Check out those stretched out legs and the fancy road shoes at their ends!


Refueled, we decided to head to Pioneers Park.


Gina is a fan of photographs of airplanes in flight. That one's for her.


Gina had never been up to see the elk & bison, and luckily, they were near the fences. The elks' antlers were so velvety & springlike!


Our shadows were getting long on the way back, and we were in a hurry to get back into town, mostly because we'd decided to stop at Zesto. It is getting there, folks. Get out and ride.

Real Spring Weekend

The weather was fantastic this weekend! After threats of rain the whole time, we only got some on Saturday morning, but mostly, skies were clear and flowers bloomed. Eric had a birthday, too. Friday evening, Felice, Brent, and I joined him for a ride to Eagle to celebrate. Despite threatening clouds, we only had a sprinkle once we were already back in town.

Over-the-shoulder-riding-with-cellphone-camera-shot. But hey, we're all in it

Sandhill Cranes

When I was out in Wood River Wednesday, I had a few minutes to spare to take some photos -- and take in the sound -- of the Sandhill Cranes. Beautiful.




Even without a telephoto, I got some croppable images. I'm especially fond of that last one, where the cranes appear to mirror one another. Listen to some audio here.

A New Playlist for April

Spring & fall often prompt the need for new playlists. Here's one for April, new & old favorites, both.

1. Doomsday - Elvis Perkins in Dearland
2. Look at Miss Ohio - Gillian Welch
3. Elephant Gun - Beirut
4. Pretty Girl from Chile - The Avett Brothers
5. Dark Eyes - Calexico
6. Soft Atlas - 13 & God
7. Each Coming Night - Iron & Wine
8. Tropics of Love - The Black Heart Procession
9. Kid for Today - Boards of Canada
10. Mercury - Mahjongg
11. Madeline Mary - Bonnie Prince Billy
12. The Orchard - Fire On Fire
13. New Star Song - The Mountain Goats
14. Planetary - Rainer Maria
15. On Reflection - The Appleseed Cast
16. Home - David Byrne & Brian Eno
17. Sometimes Our Dreams Float Like Anchors - William Elliott Whitmore

Slow Food Brunch 2009

Woke up to howling winds this morning, and I really had to work to crawl out from under the duvet. We missed the worst of the blizzard (allegedly, there are 5 foot drifts in central Nebraska), but the wind was gusting over 40mph, so I put on my trusty winter bike pants and headed into the wind and sleet down to Chez Hay.


The turn-out for this year's Slow Food Nebraska Eggstravaganza was great, despite the weather! Things I ate: spring greens, French toast, lots of cheeses, apple-cinnamon muffins, garlic scones, yogurt & granola, a mimosa, two different individually brewed cups of Cultiva coffee, including the exquisite Sidamo. Heaven in a cup.

It was hard to find a time when there was a gap in the line to get a shot of the spread.

Maggie & Pat rocking the made-to-order omelet bar. The line for this was always long.

Molly's about to dig in to a beautiful plate of food, accompanied by handmade coffee from Cultiva.

Triggertown did a lovely job of playing music. Nice to have such multitalented farmer/musicians in town!

Vitamin D

I spent the afternoon on the dock at The Mill, first meeting with Brent about our project, then reading the New Yorker (specifically this article on solitary confinement) while listening to the Afro-Cuban All-Stars, and later running into Ben, Kaleb, and Conrad. It was an excellent day for making Vitamin D.

First Tornado/Thunderstorm of 2009

I have what would best be described as a morbid fascination with tornadoes. As a child, I got extremely upset when everyone went outside as Ken Siemeck implored us to get in our basements. I had a little suitcase packed full of my favorite matchbox cars, die cast John Deere implements, and maybe a doll or other trinket that I could take into the fruit room with me at a moment's notice. Though we lived in Lincoln, we spent most of the summer on the farm, taking care of the garden & haying; for my brother & I, this also involved the creation of elaborate games with elaborate rules & generally getting into trouble. On the farm, the nearest tornado siren was in Emerald, a solid 4 miles away and hard to hear. The notion that the sirens might be going off and we couldn't even hear them??? Terrifying. (As of a few years ago, there's one at the lake, so this wouldn't be a problem anymore. Not consequently, I now enjoy watching the sky.)

But I loooove a good thunderstorm. I missed them thoroughly in New England. Now, March 23 seems a little early, but we had our first tornado warning today (a brief blast of the sirens, even), in what was a narrow, windy & fast-moving band of storms. It's snowing in Scottsbluff. I managed to bike home in the 10 minutes where it really poured. Right before I left my office, though, it was sunny & there was a rainbow.


Note, however, the extremely windblown flags. The state flag has even been wrapped around the pole a few times.

Spring, sprung

Today makes it official, but last weekend felt like the start of spring. Belatedly posted, above, my newest riding buddy & finest of neighbors, Gina, in front of the sadly not open Roca Tavern. Below, my dad grills a leg of kid from Green Glade farm.

Havelock Ride

Gina & I rode out to Havelock tonight. She learned to use her new clipless pedals like a champ.

We rolled over to Bob's Tavern, inadvertently ordered green beer, met up with the TNMWR, ran into Jim & Carrie at the Isles, and then joined the Monkeywrench pack for a fast-paced ride back to our hood. Most of them ended up going to O'Rourkes for some more Irishness, but we headed home. Work at 6:45 tomorrow is going to be rough. I'd rather live in spring...

The Cusp

From warm to snow to balmy to stormy...it's the cusp of spring again!

Got some good bike riding in this week, including a long ride with Denise to visit Polly, ending in a dark sprint home by myself through the scary-when-its-dark part of the Rock Island trail.




No scarf! Warm breeze in my hair! Nothing compared to a few weeks ago...




the cusp (a mixture of springs) from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

Springtime

The temptation to take pictures everywhere with this adorable little iSight that Ira Glass the Mac has is just too great. Hell, I'm bloggin' outside!

on this weekend

a lovely precursor-to-spring weekend, indeed. in reverse order:

i just came home on my bike, and it was too warm for my hat and my bare feet are fine. at the sun mart parking lot, i got chased down by some dangerous looking kids squeaking their newly purchased squeaky toys at me, then complaining that i was too fast. before that, i was drinking wine in adam's very hip, very urban apartment with the windows open. meggan, ande and i almost drank that wine in public, because all the nice bars were closed on sunday, so we bought the screw-top bottle from jake's. that was after espresso that followed eating outside at the oven. meggan and i wanted to eat outside after biking down from ben's apartment, where we met his parents. kaleb and i found the eiffel tower on google earth.
i had a really nice time on the farm with the family, and played basketball with bicho (my parents' border collie/blue heeler mix). the cats let me sleep in a little, since they knew nothing of the time change. i slept hard.
i met ben's really great cousin miranda. after a long hiatus, i rolled a 160 and a 163 at hollywood bowl while admiring kaleb's skills at bumper bowling. i had some terrible chinese food, after discovering that vietnamese restaurants close early. kaleb got some slip-ons, since his other shoes were wet and dirty after searching out clam shells at the lake while ben dug for antique cans of high life and coke. we rode bikes and played basketball after a snack of fresh-baked bread and homemade jams, which kaleb declared the best he had ever had. we got some serious quality time with stewarts' horses, and played hide-and-seek near my favorite tree. dad showed us the calves -- 4 so far with one more on the way, 2 heifers, 2 bulls -- and kaleb made friends with the world's best cat. i had a delicious machiato at cultiva. i threw darts for the first time since ande's dui scare night over 2 years ago. i enjoyed another saturday morning on the sofa with npr and both cats on my lap.
i was at o'rourke's, owing no one my attentions, happily floating from one conversation to the next. i hugged anna. i sat outside at yia-yia's for the first time this year. i got picked up from work in todd's gloriously deep red caprice, with the windows rolled down. i knew it would be the start of a good weekend.

tomorrow, i'll develop the four rolls of film.