Foam Thumb Mitt

About two weeks ago Jen slammed her thumb in the door of her Ranchero. Those are heavy doors. Her thumb turned purple & swelled up to the size of a lightbulb. It was very swollen & tender, so I used my museum-preparator skills & made her a foam mitt, sculpted out inside to protect the thumb while she was sleeping. Seemed to work pretty well. It would have been even better if I'd made one with a big fake thumb that had "WE'RE NUMBER 1!" printed on it. Maybe next time.

CHICKENSITTING at John & Amy's

Still moulting a little, but otherwise a fine looking chicken. Very good at finding worms.

Swimming in Austin

I sure do like splashing around in the water. Jen's friend Lauren has a swell pool.

Kayaking In Austin

It was my own fault for insisting we go take a closer look at the geese. They attacked us, scared shit out of me I have to admit, all that noise & their beaks biting the kayak as we tried to turn & haul ass away.

We escaped with everything except my dignity, though the camera lens had gotten wet & I didn't realize it until I downloaded the photos later & saw that they were blurry.

Saw dozens & dozens of turtles.

Seeing friends in Texas

My old pal Dan Plunkett in front of his record store in south Austin.

Bootmaker Lee Miller, Jen & former Austin mayor Lee Cooke, who is picking up his repaired boots from Lee & his wife Carlin's shop in south Austin.

Jen & I visit bootmakers James Morado Jr. & James Morado Sr. in their shop in north Houston.

Some boot brushes in Morado's shop.

BBQ for DJ & Mark

Pre-lunch chit-chat: (L-R in chairs:) Jen, Lise, Mark & Lee; (L-R on grass:) DJ & Boojum

Back on the 4th of July we had a BBQ for DJ & Mark, who used to live here, then moved to Philadelphia, and were now visiting. DJ does cool videocast gearhead stuff for the Exploratorium. She had just spent 6 weeks in the Arctic before she got here, making cool things like this.

The BBQ was a low key affair, just a few close friends.

Jen, DJ, Lise, Lee, Susan & Mark.

DJ & Mark shutterbuggin' me.

Lise makes fun of my "repaired" birdbath.

DJ, Lise & Lee picking corn out of their teeth.

AAAAARGHASM AHOY!

Our neighbor down the street built this pirate ship float for this year's Pride parade. Jen & I like pirates & we like puns, so the HMS AAAARGHASM really floated our boat. The quarterdeck is a bed frame.

Here are Jen & Sierra getting a close-up look:

Ouch. Another good one gone too young. Jen just got a phone call today: her friend, mentor & inspiration Tyler Beard died last night.

Jennifer June Honored

A couple more LA area photos

There's a dandelion growing in Jen's Ranchero.

It kind of bends like a CB antenna when she drives around.

The Forbes.com article on expensive cowboy boots that Jen was interviewed for turned out pretty good.

Jen wanted to go to Santa Fe for the Southwest Design Conference. She's a cowboy bootmaker, proprietor of the #1 cowboy boot website, and soon-to-be author of a book on the iconography of cowboy boot design, to be published by Rizzoli in 2007. Because of all this, she often goes to interesting places & I try to tag along when I can. Here she is while we're waiting for lunch at Cowgirl Hall of Fame restaurant.

While we were there, I interviewed a few artists, all of whom had recently relocated from the Bay Area to New Mexico. My interview with Mary Bennett may never see the light of day, but the one with Ines Kramer is currently up on the front page of stretcher & in the archive there's one with Mary Tsiongas. There's also an essay of mine that I like, archived on stretcher, called Lebensraum