Balmy Weather and Beef Patties

I am so done with cold. This is why:

Advantages of cold: winter weather is beautiful, snow angels, no mosquitoes, no rain, no profuse sweating, snowboarding (although the cost of snowboarding is arguably not even worth the enjoyment that I get out of it).
Disadvantages of cold: Having to wear preposterous amounts of clothing, it makes my skin dry, diseases run rampant in cold weather, traveling anywhere becomes an arduous and unpleasant task (esp. considering that I can't ride my bike during the winter and i have no car), insufficient D vitamins (because of the short days, and my unwillingness to go outside in the cold... my essentially nocturnal sleeping schedule doesn't help), no golden tan, lack of greenery, no outdoor swimming, no grass frolicking, no fresh fruits and veggies, no summer jams, massive heating bills, ugg boots, runny noses, all the ladies are too covered up for me to appreciate their nice figures!

As you can see, warm weather clearly wins.

What makes me think of all this stuff is that one, I keep thinking about Danielle and how she's in her warm paradise wonderland; and two, we had the biggest weather cock-tease ever in Burlington the other day. It was 50 degrees the entire day. Of course after two days the temperature went right back to 15 degrees. But that one 50 degree day, rainy as it was, made me jones for warm whether like nobody's business. This is why recently I have incessantly been daydreaming about summer. I'm even making plans for what I will do during the summer. My plans so far include going back to work painting for PPM, actually following through on the plan to visit Longwood Gardens with a fat sack of grass and my best friends, taking a road-trip to Canada, and making and devouring at least half of the burgers on this list:

http://www.cheeseandburger.com/

To do the whole list just seems a like a little too much of a task. I was thinking a weekly burger-making-day thing?

This is the first one I want to try:


It's called the lumberjack. I am terrified of how huge this burger is but want so badly to tackle it.

Not only does this website have the worlds most mouth watering collection of delicious cheeseburger recipes ever, but it also features the voice of Patrick Warburton. This guy:


Between his burger announcer role on this website, his role as Brock Sampson in the Venture Bros., and his role as Kronk in the Emperor's New Groove, he is most definitely my favorite voice in the world, just beating out Morgan Freeman and Bernie Mac. I don't know what it is about his voice, but it makes me laugh like I used to when my brother sat on my legs and tickled my feet.

For good measure, here's another little sketch I did the other day:

I Call You Sugar; You're My Candy

Also I've been systematically developing all the film in my freezer. At first when I saw that these were from a holga, I thought they had to be Nicole's. But then after I developed more rolls, I saw that some of this shit is from the drive from New Orleans to New York and then Ithaca, too. Nicole's never been to Ithaca. I vaguely remember my brother sending some cameras down with my dad, and I guess one of them must have been a super sampler. Highlights:

Jesus Was a Crossmaker

The pictures are less grainy this time around, thanks to it being the middle of the day and super sunny. But I think I need to look into getting the shutter fixed because that burn is a little intense.

I Just Decided To Do Something More Creative, More Personal...

So my trust rusty digital camera, Tor, finally kicked the bucket this past winter break. I mistreated him a little, I think. But in my defense, he was like 5 years old, which is practically a dinosaur in digital camera terms. He was good to me though, and I will never forget him.

In the meantime though, I can't not take pictures, so I've been using a Spartus Full-Vue from a gazillion years ago that I bought for $8 at Hubs a while back. There's no time control on the shutter, so that's what the giant burn is from, and I've been using 400 film for all light conditions. Clearly, I've got some work to do before things turn out just how I like.

But this is what I've gotten so far:

this one is from a long time ago, not the spartus, but i liked it.







I'm relatively pleased.

Totally Tubular

Matthew Gray Gubler is super skinny. And he has a really long neck. Evidence:



But he somehow manages to be very, very hot in a mega nerd kind of way. Other people think he's hot too, because he used to be a model before he was an actor.





He went to film school at Tisch or some other kind of thing like that. I guess he made a movie called The Cactus That Looked Like a Man. It could also have been called The Man That Looked Like a Cactus. I don't know, I can't remember everything. Anyways, now he is an actor on my number one jam, Criminal Minds. He plays a nerd/FBI agent whose mom is that gay dog groomer from Best in Show. Coincidentally (because Best in Show is a mockumentary and stuff) he made a mockumentary about himself:



There is a whole series of those ones which you probably should watch. And then there is this thing:



The final reason that I love him so much is that he is also an artist. As you can probably tell, he is the inspiration behind creature features. If I could make art like his art, I would be really really proud of it. Look:












He has a website full of all his great paintings. It is called Gublerland. Go there.

Here is a picture of him in his regular life, being a regular guy:



Probably I'm in love.

Intense

Write My Memoirs Across My Heart

I've been thinking about getting more tattoos a lot recently, but I haven't been able to figure out exactly what I want. I won't get anything until I find something that I really like, enough that I want to look at it for the rest of my life. I've been looking for inspiration on fuckyeahtattoos and I've seen loads of really great things.

Some ones:








This one reminded me of Hattie.

If I get something big, it will probably be on my ribs. The idea that sounds best to me right now (inspired by the above, obv.) is an as yet undetermined number (one?) (maybe two to make it symmetrical?) of arrows. They might be on my wrists, but since I already have my fleur de lys there... I was thinking maybe straight down from my elbows towards my wrists (on the back or the front?) Maybe on the backs of my arms pointing towards my elbows? The whole thing about arrows is that my mom was Michigan state champeen in women's archery and her father owned an archery shop in Detroit.

What do you guys think?