Dec 30th Pic!

"Wet Nikes"

My brand spankin new kicks got drenched in my rain soaked bike ride home yesterday...which sucked hard. My brand spankin new kicks which I had to scour the net to find, and finally after two weeks of debating whether I needed to add another pair to my already vast collection I decided I NEED'ed them. See I have flat as pancake feet and it hurts to walk around for extended periods of time in non-sneaker type shoes, so I figured I'd get some low key but still sick looking Nikes, Eva isn't happy but I can walk for miles and miles and miles...that was a "The Who" shout out! 

Dec 29th Pic!

"Clean Wheel"

Full Disclosure, this pic was actually taken on the 30th but I’m going to post as the 29th because I did all the work to clean my bike on the 29th and simply forgot to take a pic once I got done. So on the 29th I rode my Bike to work in what turned out to be a frigid cold day. On the way to work it wasn’t too bad, but it started to sprinkle a little the last half mile, so I broke a little sweat booking it on the final stretch to work. I rode to work on the condition that if it really started to pour Eva would come pick me up. When I was ready to leave work, Eva called offering a ride but I turned it down thinking the ground was simply wet and that it wasn’t raining, but boy was I wrong. On my way home I figured I was already wet so might as well push it for another 30mins. Once I got home, I took about 20 minutes using my Car polishing products to clean up my bike! I even used the tire polish on the wheels! Hence the pic of my shiny tire! Even through it got muddied up on the ride home, it was better than new in 20 mins!

Dec 28th Pic!

"Decanted"

Wine Decanter, Eva’s Christmas present to me. After watching Cleopatra (the one with Liz Taylor) I had commented that the Decanters look really cool and that I’d probably feel like a roman if I had one. So on Christmas day I got one after making a similar comment every time I had seen a Decanter.

Dec 27th Pic!

"Ghost Orchid"

I have a new found appreciation for those that hunt for rare artifacts for a living, such as a Ghost Orchid, a White Alligator etc etc…well for me it was the Caramel flavor of the Haagen’ Dazs Five Ice Cream. Eva and I had tried almost all the flavors, we knew the Carmel was out there but never saw it at any grocery store we had been to. Well on the Monday on my way home from work I stopped at Safeway to pick up some items and just for shits and giggles sake decided to walk through the Ice Cream isle and to my shock and surprise there was ONE Caramel flavor left, AND it was on sale! …I pushed/shoved the little kid gawking at some popsicles out of my way and got the last pint of Caramel…win! I’ll eventually taste it, not much of an Ice Cream kind of guy so maybe once the weather heats up a little.

Dec 26th Pic!

"Pork!!"

Leftovers from my dinner on the 24th for lunch, Pork with cranberries and string beans. We had initially planned on hitiching our bikes onto our car and driving up to Sedona, but the weather forecast in Sedona forced us to change our plans. In the end we stayed in town and cleaned the mess we created on Christmas day. After about 4-5 hours of hard labor we finally managed to get the place back to normal.

Dec 25th Pic!

"Gift time!"

Christmas Morning! We opened the presents at a fast pace so we could go for a bike ride into the city from South Mountain. Sonoran Bike Path, a bike path that goes into downtown Phoenix and beyond. The plan was to ride into Downtown, have a Bloody Mary at one of the Hotel restaurant’s, relax and ride back. The problem with the plan was that tying down bikes to the car takes a lot of effort; it’s one of those rare instances besides when moving residences where I wished I had a truck.

Dec 24th Pic!

"Menu Review"

X-Mas Eve! Since Eva and I had no real plans for Christmas, and therefore the Eve we decided to celebrate our holidays with a nice meal at Café Zuzu at the Valley Ho Hotel. Somehow every time we’ve been there we manage to get free food along with outstanding service. This time Eva found hair in the pasta dish (could’ve been hers) before she touched it, so we got it for free!! That’s drinks on the house!

"Russian 4 Russian"

After a great dinner we went to a local dive bar to knock down a few refreshments, the main reason we went there was to see the Christmas lights, apparently the “Coach House” packs the entire place with lights…evidenced by the picture and the lady looking at us, since we were the only ones at the bar with big ass cameras!

"Lights around"

Dec 23rd Pic!

"Stuck in Cork"

Uncorked! No not the wine bar, but rather the cork itself, which as you can see by the pic above has been put to a good use (reuse?). As any Prius driving dolt will tell you, recycling is a good thing, and after seeing a similar frame at a Winery in Tucson, I decided to make two. Lined up approximately 6 corks…best part is having to drink ALL that wine ;) …then I hot glued them, once that settles, glue a piece of cardboard on the bottom, then use a big kitchen knife to saw, for 3-5mins, finally insert pic! Done! …oh if you happened to drink all 6 bottles of wine at once, +10 points. If I help you drink that wine +20 points.

"To the roses"

Eva's Badgers ornament, I need one for UofA, too bad they aren't going to the Rose Bowl! :(

Dec 22nd Pic!

"Toting Gunz"

Bang Bang! Drove to the Scottsdale Gun Club to pick up a gift card for my Arm’s toting Boss for Christmas. He’ll get to unload some of that stress I’m sure I placed on him. This was a random Wednesday both Eva and I happened to have off from work, so I decided to make a quick run up to the Gun Club in my Jeans and a hoodie, figuring I’d be dressed up for that sort of crowd. When I got there I saw nothing but sparkling new Benzes, Porches, Hummers etc etc…as I’m walking towards the door in my ratty Jeans in a Hoodie that’s a size too big, and flip flops that are a few miles past their prime, two impeccably dressed men walk past me with a pistol tucked in the back of their jeans, the scene inside the club didn’t differ much. The store area, where I got my gift card, had 100’s of crazy looking guns which it seems like almost anyone can buy! Even Pink ones for the girls!

Later that day Eva and I made a day out of checking out downtown Gilbert, where we found some of the odds and end’s you see below. Yes that’s a Packer car! and a town’s old water tower…and random little Window decorations in downtown Scottsdale. Oh yeah we saw the Black Swan that night, and it was ok, the ending was good, but the whole time you had this feeling inside your stomach that this wasn’t going to end well.

"Up in water"

"Fan-atic"

"Window Buddy"

Dec 21st Pic!

Back to back uneventful days…yes we’re coming down to the last few days of the blog.

Dec 20th Pic!

No Pic…yeah it was an uneventful day.

Dec 19th Pic!

"Victory Parade"

So the Giants finally won the World Series, and though I could care less about the World Series I’ve gotta give them a shout out. Too bad Barry Bond’s wasn’t on the team when they won. Yes it’s one of those days while we were busy cooking or eating or cleaning where a Pic had to be taken, so in lieu of the Wine+Tapenade or bowls of Pasta pic’s I went with, hey what’s that on the counter pic!

Dec 18th Pic!

"My Ale"

Holiday party at Courtney’s…as my friends and I’ve aged the parties have gotten fairly tame, still fun but not so crazy where it takes 2-3 days to recover a 100%. Eva and I brought Tequila with Organic Margarita mix to the party, along with some salt to rim the cups…something Organic in my alcohol....damn I’m getting old, what happened to the days were Alcohol itself was good enough? Regardless, it was a fun time and got to hang out with some friends I hadn’t seen in a while.

Dec 17th Pic!

"Well Framed"

After months of holding on to a Groupon for a photo framing service we finally got our act together at the absolute last minute and ordered two frames. Absolute last minute being on our trip back from LA at 11:45pm, approximately 15mins before the entire coupon would be void. Now consider how many pic’s I take and double that with Eva’s pics and imagine having to go through that archive to pick two good ones that would look good on a wall. Well our task wasn’t easy but we made it a little simpler by choosing cactus as our subject and picked the two best cactus pics we had lying around. I’d say it worked out pretty well. $250 a pop if you want to purchase ;)

Dec 16th Pic!

"Hola Jalapeno"

Ok so we couldn’t really wait till the 25th to open all the presents, some of it was food which we had to rescue…this was from Eva’s parents, where anything that could be implied as being spicy hot was implied for me! One of the other hot items was a meat stick that’s dynamite flavored…I figured that could’ve have been for Eva, with her being vegetarian and all.

Dec 15th Pic!

"Under the TV"

Eva’s Christmas presents arrived a little early, leaving her with 10 days to curb her enthusiasm. Wrapping is probably…no, is the worst part of Christmas presents. Her presents were wrapped very well, especially from her grand parents…they went all out, so much so that when we did open the presents on the 25th I saved some of the wrappings.

Dec 14th Pic!

"Clear Vision"

Another variation of a through my eye glasses pic, outside of my glasses is a pretty accurate depiction of how my world looks without my glasses, and inside is lens is almost there, it’s not as curved though. This is another one of those lazy pic a day nights where I realize at the last minute I haven’t taken a Pic.

Dec 13th Pic!

"Animal Deodorant"

Some spices for Eva’s dad! Bought this little can at one of the wineries…we figured since he likes to hunt, he can use this to spruce up one of the skinned and beheaded Bambie’s …err Deer he hunts.

Dec 12th Pic!

"Glass House 2"

Our last day in Tucson, Eva and I took a drive to the world famous Biosphere 2. It’s an enclosed ecosystem where scientists and biologists can run experiments such as effects of drought on rain forests etc etc. It’s a pretty damn fascinating structure, apart from rainforests it also has an Ocean, Desert and a living space for the scientists that lived there in the 90’s. When the scientists lived there, they were completed cutoff from the outside world; they even had to survive entirely on the eco system they constructed, from Oxygen to food!
Ok so that’s the tour guides version of the Biosphere 2 (Biosphere 1 is the Earth, dummy!)…the place was pretty damn suffocating, I had hard time breathing while I was inside it, and it felt stuffy throughout. It’s a really cool experiment but I can’t ever see myself living there.

"Rain Forrest 2"

"Power of the Witch"

This lady looked crazy on our way out the Biosphere 2, the vacuum creates this crazy pic!

Dec 11th Pic!

"Home Grown"

Wine tasting in Elgin, AZ...that's about 1hr South of Tucson. The wine is great, and you can't complain about 70 degree weather in December...and drinking wine among the mountains. We visited five wineries and considering they were less than a mile away from each other there was very little drunk driving going on!

Dec 10th Pic!

"Turtle Snapping"

Down in Tucson for the weekend, the original plan was to take the bikes down and act like it's 2004...back when I was in undergrad! In the end we decided to pass on taking our bikes so we could avoid the Hour+ setup time it would take to load and unload the bikes at all the locations we would be visiting in grimy Tucson! 

"The Grill"

One of my favorite places to eat in Downtown Tucson, the place looks like crap on the outside and the inside, though it has a certain charm, the food however is amazing! The milkshakes, the tater tots and the tortellini.

Dec 9th Pic!

"Early Xmas!"

I tried my best to hide the fact that I picked up Eva's Christmas present early but I forgot what she really liked. The last time we looked at shades she was torn between two, and picked one at the last minute that looked exactly like the one before it....so when I went back a week later, I was a little confused. In the end I chose right!

Dec 8th PIc!

FAIL!

Another one of those...oh crap, it's 12:20am...Eva did you take a pic today? No. Damn! I've still only managed to miss less than 5 Picadai's....home stretch folks!

Dec 7th Pic!

"Game Room"

Well more like a small corner where we put our misc stuff. Scrabble, a watch and a Nerf gun...you've got 10sec's to come up with a word or you're getting shot! Scrabble Roulette...and so many more possibilities!

Dec 6th Pic!

"Salt TV"

New Photo technique Eva discovered, it's called TTV I think, means Through The Viewfinder (TTV). This is the pic of a salt grinder taken using my camera as seen through Eva's camera viewfinder! Speaking of Salt, it's officially back! Now that I'm grinding it, I'm putting it on everything!  

Dec 5th Pic!

"Electric Candle"

Christmas lights are up! the tree is up...ok it's a small plastic tree but hey we've got a small apartment, and plus I'm not killing a Tree just so I can provide some shade to my Amazon.com gift cards. Our apartment is all about a minimal carbon footprint! ...Ok it's really just about being too lazy to go chop a tree, hoist it on the car, lug it up two sets of stairs, then let Eva dress it up....I mean doesn't that just have too much of a hunter/gatherer vibe to it? Replace Tree with Elk, or Moose or Polar Bear. I'm a modern man...I'm more boil Pasta than kill Polar Bear! 

Dec 4th Pic!

"Nice Rack"

...And that concludes Bike Week here at Picadai! Really I promise...It won't mean the end of Bike pic's it just means end of Bike only discussions.

Yes that is a cool rack attached to my bike with my awesome Timbuk2 bag on it. One might wonder, are rear bike racks hard to attach to a bike? Well as the foremost authority on Rear Bike racks I can attest that they are in fact pretty damn unintuitive. I ordered one from Amazon that didn't fit..ok, so I bought one from a local bike store, made sure it said Universal Rack, that didn't fit...what! So after a day of just looking at it, I had an Aha moment, you know one of those moments that recovering alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity...mine just happened to be about a bike rack. In my moment, I Youtube'd "Installing a Rear Bike Rack" ...bada bing bada boom...the answer was so simple I felt stupid. Trust me, those suckers aren't as intuitive as they seem. 

Dec 3rd Pic!

"Pedal Power"

In writing that title I learned that it's almost impossible to spell "Pedal"...It just doesn't roll off the tongue (it took me 3 spell checks to spell tongue...damn right I got my Masters at ASU!).

Now that I've rode my bike to work for at least a week, I've made a few observations.

1. Other Adults who ride their bikes to work don't really care that you also ride your bike to work. I found this out after repeated attempts at smirking, smiling, and flat out waving at other Adult bikers and not getting ANY form of acknowledgment (I love spell check!). So the only logical conclusion I can come to is that these Adult cyclists must not own a car and don't give a damn about me doing my part (smug alert) to save to planet! They're bummed because they have to ride their bikes to work...screw waving back at that guy with his cool helmet and lunch bag strapped to his awesome bag!

2. College Students who ride their bikes really don't give a damn about those who ride their bikes to work. I'm smart enough to know this inherently since I was a college student not too long ago, I didn't give a damn either. The problem with College students is, they ride slow...real l l l l y slow, and don't bother to get out of your way! I bought a cool bell to take care of this problem! "...Ring Ring....Hey Brah! can you sweep your long flowing locks of hair out of your eyes and let me bike past you...brah!"

3. Pedestrians pray that you burn in hell. I won't elaborate on that any further!

Dec 2nd Pic!

"Helmet Buddies"

Oh yeah, I just got my Helmet on the 2nd! I guess that means I'll be wearing a helmet on my bike rides to work! I won't look like a dork at all, how could I? I've got a Timbk2 bag, a big bike lock across my torso, and a light blue lunch bag clipped onto my bag. Just picture that, just oozes cool! Oh and my IPod which I use to listed to Podcasts....I'm only a pair of ear mufflers away from being jumped by a pair of rowdy middle schoolers! I could probably take on 2 or 3 of them, I'm running if it's 4.

Dec 1st Pic!

"Found"

Another one of Eva's pics. On the days she goes on a Pic taking rampage she'll come home excited about maybe 5-6 pics that she'll want to upload on her Flickr site. When she finally finds time to edit the pic's, put her name stamp on them, she'll ask for my help with naming them. I take complete blame for her wanting to name them, because I teased her about putting up pic's titled "IMG34021" WTF! ...So now I help her come up with the names, only problem is I'm less critical about the names I give my pic's, I usually put the first or second thing that pop's into my mind, similar to the "Go with you gut" instinct when taking multiple choice exams. When you take time to chew over the titles of your pic's you're in trouble because the process that should take 5 secs ends up taking 20-30mins! With Eva, I usually shoot out 5-6 names and let her decide after struggling for 20-30 mins! ..."Found"

Nov 30th Pic!

"City to City"

Eva's day off, so she was nice enough to walk around the local park and take some pic's! Only problem is she goes on these walks by herself, without telling anyone where she's going, often to secluded places in the park or around town to get the perfect pic. There should be a GPS tracking device a person should have on them in an event one gets taken from a secluded location, or at least an android phone because we know that...Droid does!

"Row Row"

Right outside our apartment so it's not as secluded a location but you'd be surprised how many "wilderness" places there are in a big city like Phoenix.

Nov 29th PIc!

"Tucson Sunset"

No it's not the Patagonia logo, it's the sunset captured on my drive back from Tucson, AZ. A little shaky but what can you expect from a 75mph drive by photo...I'd say it's as perfect as it's going to get! Another thing to consider is that Tucson hasn't paved it's roads since roads were invented so they're practically dirt and rubble now. Can't wait to hit the rubble again in a few weeks when we go check out the Biodome! I'll save my Pauly Shore reference till the Biodome post...you're welcome. 

Nov 28th Pic!

"Dinner Served"

Sunday night dinner, one of my favorites pasta with homemade tomato sauce, bread and wine...can't beat that unless you're watching the Godfather or the Sopranos while eating it. Making the food is pretty easy, it's the clean up that's a pain in the ass! Good thing Eva does both pretty well while I get to lounge around ;) 

Nov 27th Pic!

"In the City"

Downtown Phoenix! we went Argentina Wine tasting at Chevuront Wine Bar with Chris and Jenny. That was fun, then decided to make a day of it by walking around and almost checking out the Auto Show. The Auto Show was something my Dad and I used to do, so it would've been fun to go check it out, but Eva wasn't as interested, no convertible Benz-es for her to look at! 

"Squat"

"Chris & Jenny"

Nov 26th Pic!

"Dead Landing"

Day after thanksgiving I had to work, so Eva was kind enough to spend her day taking some awesome pics! See more of her work here! 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/evazoellner

"Man V Nature"

"New Ride!"

Since I live so close to work now, less than 6 miles, this is how I roll!

Nov 25th Pic!

"Catching Thoughts"

Thanksgiving day! after a day of cooking....and eating, we decided to head to the park to catch some sun and relax while taking pics. In regards to the above pic, I really like blurry pic's they're far more interesting, not to mention abstract than the same picture 100% clear! 

"Swan song"

"More Wine"

...And of course we had Wine with our meal, that's me cleaning up in the background!