Fact: Where it once took me 25 minutes to bike to Arise!, it now takes me 20.

Fact: Where it once took me an hour to bike to the museum, it now takes me 45 minutes.

Fact:Â Hijiki costs $10.50 at the co-op. It costs $3.50 at United Noodles.

As we tear out rot on the house, we are finding that someone used newspaper to insulate the house in 1944. I took photos of my favorite shreds.

This one is particularly appropriate: an ad for a Peter Lorre movie, The Mask of Demetrios… I’m going to Chicago next weekend to see the World/Inferno Friendship Society touring with their album based on the story of his life.

I bought a new bike today — tired of lugging around my old one. This one is almost exactly like the one that was stolen off my front porch. I got on, and I knew it was exactly what I wanted. Plus who can refuse pink handlebar tape? Yay!

Progress on the kitchen counter…

And my friend’s house around the corner had a rad sign out today:

I’m fresh out of photoshop on my new computer, sadly. I’ll be rocking the gimp for a while… we’ll see how that goes.

New site launched, for my friend Gabriel and his new book, Calling All Radicals, out on Nation Books.

Also found some inspiration by this article in Print about Local Projects. There are so many interesting things happening in the world of museums and interactive storytelling… I hope to be a part of that!

Current jams: destroy all monsters, hex dispensers, underground railroad to candyland

Lots of work on the house this weekend, finally pulled the last of the asbestos siding off today. Ah, the most beautiful house on the block!

Dead bird from the eaves of the house:

New kitchen counter in the window. Of course, it will need some tile… another project!

Had a nice dinner with some folks the other night about the local currency/hours exchange project. I’m pretty excited about that (and a billion other projects I keep somehow getting involved in.) What I like about this is it requires (relatively) low maintenance for it to work. My contribution, at the very list, could be to help build a computer program for managing all the currency users — so we can have a spot to list skills and also write “reviews” of peoples’ work.

If you are in town, keep an eye out for flyers to fill out with what skills you would like to trade, and skills you would like to barter for — and feel free to think creatively about what those might be.

… knowing that the new World Inferno Friendship Society is at Extreme Noise in CD form, but the vinyl is not here yet… I don’t want the CD! Meanwhile I just have to make do with the one new song on their myspace page. Ah, the awkward transition into the digital age.

I caved and got an iPod for a price I couldn’t refuse. I’ve been stuffing it with music, but Tip got ahold of it and programmed her own playlist:

1) Dog At Large, Naked Raygun
2) Dog Tree, The Ex
3) All Dogs are Hes, All Cats are Shes, Toys that Kill (though she’s perplexed by the title)
4) Corky Dog, Citizen Fish
5) Hear the Dogs, Dog Faced Hermans (her favorite band, of course)
6) Rough Dogs have Bumps, Melt Banana
7) Vagabond Dog, Naked Raygun
8) Bulldog Front, Fugazi
9) Underdog, The Dirtbombs

Why don’t you rise me up?

…so far tonight. I’m exhausted — it’s 2:30 in the morning and I still don’t think she’s quite right yet. On her last one, I was rushing her to the back door and somehow she started spasming right by the basement steps and fell all the way to the bottom. Ugh.

Bryan & Justin started building our new fence this weekend! I’m sorry I wasn’t around to help — I did three workshops at the Simultaneous Fest, which was really fun. I think the timebank/hours exchange program might actually take off. I was thinking about how it might work, and I wonder if I’d even want to list web dev as a sharable skill — I do it too much for regular money I don’t want to burn out. There are other skills I’d happily share… we’ll see.

The fence in the background is the new fence; the one in the fore we are getting rid of, giving us more yard!

…and a butterfly I found and released from our kitchen.