Ring of fire

I'm in Hawaii right now, and it's been blowing my mind at every turn. Today's adventure: a hike around an active volcano, Kilauea. We came to the caldera's edge just after sunset and waited for the sky to get dark. As the light faded, the glow from the lake of lava inside the crater got brighter and brighter. Until it looked like this (click for monstrously large version) :

Then over to the Observatories at Mauna Kea, the world's largest astronomical observatory. The combined light-gathering power of the telescopes on the volcano summit is sixty times greater than that of the Hubble Space Telescope. The Keck Telescope and twelve others are at the top, but we went up halfway to the visitor center, where volunteers with telescopes let us use them to gawk at distant astronomical objects. I saw the Ring Nebula, 2,300 light years away. There were more stars in the sky than I had ever seen. The Milky Way was a carpet of tiny lights. "Beautiful" doesn't quite capture it.

Mind = blown.

Updates

I've got a few things going on, mostly exciting!

First, I'm framing a number of paintings for the show at the Pure Wine Cafe in Ellicott City. This entails many hours in the basement every day, playing with power tools and painting things and otherwise fooling around and getting covered in schmutz. Pictures to come...

There have been many adventures with Wowbagger, including swimming holes, night hikes followed by swimming holes, and a beautiful 18th century graveyard we stumbled upon after a relaxing tubing session down a river and an epic barefoot trek through knee-deep mud (whilst trying to get back to the parking lot).

I have a job! I will be tutoring nervous high school kidlings in the dark arts of the SAT. Had to retake the bloody test in its entirety to get the job - needless to say, I am not as smart as I was in high school - but it seems to have been worth it. I start in September. I never thought my first job out of college would require business casual and respectable conduct, but so it goes.

Finally, I've found another venue that might be interested in my art. I've been slacking recently, but I'm gonna have to start churning out new ones again. This is exciting!

A rough draft of my latest:

She's going to be a maenad. With prehensile hair.

Life is good!

Submitted my abstract for the LSA conference in January... months of coding and banging of my head against walls and other stationary objects come to fruition! There will be more coding, of course. Our n (low, approaching silly) is still a problem, so there's lots more data crunching to do before January, but I don't have to worry about that for a while.

Meanwhile, I'm working on framing a number of my paintings for this art show coming up. This entails hanging out in the basement for hours on end whilst high on spray paint fumes and playing with power tools.

I saw Iron Maiden in concert! Dream Theater opened during a sunshower, which was lovely. Then, just as Maiden came onstage, the sky cleared and a rainbow appeared opposite a pretty sunset. Rainbows are so metal.

Fig. 1) Eddie!

Fig. 2)   |m|

Life is pretty sweet.

Adventures + Tim Minchin

Fellow internet and IRL adventurer Wowbagger is now the official Baltimore Outdoor Adventure Examiner! Check out his column for reviews, ratings, and pictures of some of the hoopy outdoor adventures to be had in the DC/Baltimore area.

He is also responsible for my new obsession with Tim Minchin, singer/songwriter/comedian extraordinaire. Embedded for your viewing pleasure is one of his videos. This one's fun, and will tickle the skeptically inclined. Safe for work.





If you want more (you know you do), this one is hilarious and actually rather virtuosic. Decidedly NOT safe for work. Enjoy!

Quite the weekend

The first part of this weekend was hikes and assorted adventures with Wowbagger: there was an 80's band, some trouble with the law, and a lovely beach. Atrocious sunburns aside (always reapply, kids), it was a great success. 

For Wowbagger

Today was something of a blow to the ego: sat at a farmer's market for 7 hours as people walked past my table of paintings. Almost none of them stopped. One or two came over and looked for a moment, and I even got some compliments, but I didn't sell a single painting. I think it was because I was just across from a table overflowing with pretty shiny beads. I can't compete with shiny things: people love shiny things.

It wasn't a total loss, though. I met a sweet, vague man called Angel. Angel chases storms and photographs clouds. He asked me what kind of weather I liked best. I told him I liked the unpredictable kind, when it's sunny one moment and pouring the next. He flipped through his photos and gave me a picture of just that: looming storm clouds against a blue sky. Then he explained very earnestly that the beams of sunlight coming through the clouds were actually angels coming down to Earth. I nodded. He smiled,  handed me a little figurine of a baby, and wished me luck.

Then I met Crazy Joe. Crazy Joe introduced himself with a dirty joke - the middle-aged ladies nearby giggled in horror - and took a picture of me with my paintings for posterity. He used to sell hand-blown bongs and pipes - "everything but the weed" - at this very farm market 20 years ago. He made quite a living for himself, but things went downhill after he discovered cocaine, and now he wanders around the place hitting on starving artists with pink hair.

It was actually significantly less creepy than it sounds now. The amusing crazy overwhelmed the alarming creepy, and talking to Crazy Joe was a lot more fun than reading patronizing GRE prep books or staring off into space.

Quite the weekend. Now it's time for more aloe and a nap.