SkyFlowers

I want to catch you
shower of gold
this is the end of the rainbow broadcast
across the evening sky
shakes my heart
Boom. Boom. Crack.
shakes my bones
fingers of light to caress this aching soul
More! More!
Please never let this end
So much smoke the aftermath.
Wherewithal does this wind us blow?
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
Fill this union with soot
but take away the memories.

I spent the Fourth of July with my friends Kellen and Dani on Kellen's grandparent's boat out on Lake Union. It's really the first time I've done the whole fireworks thing without my family. I grew up going to our family cabin on Hood Canal. That's long sold now, so the last few years have been much quieter celebrations of Independence Day, that is of course if we do anything at all.

I have to say there's something to be said for experiencing the Fourth on a boat. Being able to feel every explosion as the fireworks light up the sky was something I highly recommend… unless you have heart problems or an otherwise sensitive constitution. If you're going to be on the boat all day before the fireworks start though, I strongly recommend bringing not only copious amounts of food/drink, but also things to keep yourself entertained.

Anyways, during the light show I felt rather poetic and since I didn't have my usual notebook handy, so I pulled out my phone and texted the above poem in chunks to my email. It's not the most eloquent way to write a poem, I know, but it got the ideas out of my head and into a more concrete medium than anything else available.

I realized only after I had Dani read it that it kind of sounds like a love poem, which I suppose I shouldn't ruin that element of it by admitting that it's not, but… it's not a love poem, or it wasn't meant as such when I first wrote it. I may keep this and adapt and expand what I have into something more once I have someone in mind to be writing about.

The Remedy (I won't worry)

To my girlfriend Lauren Smith (19), to my not-a-girl friend Emerson Peek (22) and to the USA (233), happy birthday wishes all around! To everyone else, happy federal holiday dedicated to blowing stuff up. Not that I condone pyromania on a national level, especially with what we've done to our national forests and their increased combustability, but that's irrelevant, let's celebrate.

Be safe, have fun and for the love of Mike (who's Mike?), take some pictures for posterity.

For anyone interested, the included pic is yet another acelessthan3 original print. I managed to make four variants of this design (which I've named "the hope umbrella") before the stencil fell apart on me. Because the holes were a little smaller, it was harder to evenly screen the ink through all the different parts... maybe I need to thin the ink? Anyone with experience silkscreening, your advice would be welcomed.

Freshman Fifteen: College Health

I for one firmly believe in the Freshman Fifteen. I went in weighing something like 170 lbs and am now somewhere closer to 155. I blame the dancing twice a week, and the Nerfing on Saturdays and running back and forth from one end of campus to the other several times a day. Oh, and the dining hall food. Having a regular, hearty breakfast in the morning and then eating mostly the vegetarian options for every other meal will get to you.

Going to college does not mean you have to gain weight, if anything it's an excuse to be in the best shape of your life. Cold hard facts say that this is right around when our metabolisms start slowing down, meaning we don't burn as many calories as we did while we were going through that growth spurt called puberty, but just because you aren't some hot-blooded young thing anymore doesn't mean you can't look like it.

For most, the college lifestyle is pretty laid back. You have at the very most four classes a day, many of which get planned so you can sleep in until noon and then the rest of your time to study… or not. When your college has full on gym facilities rivaling that of many YMCAs, why not put them to use, you're already paying for them.



Losing weight rather than gaining it when you head off to college is about more than just going to the Rec center once a week though, you have to maintain an active lifestyle and eat a healthy diet, just like you would if you were out in the real world. Pizza, as convenient and tasty (not to mention cheap) as it can be, isn't going to help you if you have it every night and despite the name, Beer Pong is not an active sport.

Get out there, and get involved. Dance clubs almost always need more men in their ranks, and I'm sure you can find some people willing to play Ultimate Frisbee with you on a nice day. Or you can do like I did and let out your frustrations of the week by running around an empty lecture hall shooting at your friends with foam darts. There's always more going on than you'd expect at a college, and if not, by all means, start something.

But I'm starting to sound like one of those guides that well-meaning parents get as graduation presents for incoming freshman.

Ew.

I won't deny that those things have some value if you've lived a sheltered life or suddenly lose all common sense by moving what's hopefully a minimum 2 hour's drive away from home (no offense to all those still living at home, but isn't the point of going away to college to go away?), but they're so generic and authoritative I'm sickened by the thought of them, like one of those crappy, summer, road trip comedies that Hollywood seems to come out with every year. There's only so many ways you can tell people not to do dumb shit before you have to let them learn the hard way.

Gear Up Camp

By the time I've set this post to upload, I will be East side of the mountains volunteering with an organization I've come to greatly respect and admire for their work inspiring and empowering youth.

When I get back I should have plenty of stories and pictures to share as I finally get to give back to a program that has truly changed my life.

While I'm away though: I was looking through my computer and found several articles I'd saved regarding the then recent demise of Mother's Cookies. I think I had been planning to write some kind of eulogy for the delicious circus animals, but somehow never got around to it.

It was a hard blow for me when I first learned about the demise of Mother's Cookies, because they were one of the things I looked forward to most about donating my blood to the Cascade Regional Vampires. Though really, what do you look forward to in giving blood? Even for someone like me who isn't afraid of needles, having one shoved into your arm isn't exactly an experience you try to have happen all that often.

Now, I'm sure there are generic pink and white animal cookies that taste exactly the same, but that smiling face has been a hallmark of so many of our childhoods that it's a shame to see it gone. They didn't even make it to a centennial celebration to have special crazy rainbow colored cookies or some such confectionary nonsense, since they closed down after only 94 years.

Admittedly, it's been several months since this news came to pass and I haven't exactly missed them while I've been away at college, but it's the cookie, not how often you eat it that counts.

My only question is, which tasted better? The pink animals or the white ones?

Making use of my new screen printing kit: First print.

I've always been fond of panthers and leopards and similar big cats. So i put one on my shirt.

The idea was to have the tail lead you around the body of the shirt and basically try something different with the placement of the print.

I mean, anybody can splash an image across the chest or back of a shirt, and I'm just as sure that anybody could do a wrap-around like this, but people don't and that's why I made this my first project.

I don't think I used quite enough ink, since as you can tell by the white spot above the hindquarters, some of the black washed out, but for the maiden print, I would call this a success.