Random pictures from my phone.

Periodically, I remember that I have a Bluetooth interface on my desktop, and I download a bunch of pictures. Then I look at them on screen larger than an Airmail postage stamp (I've got the single cheapest phone that AT&T offers with a QWERTY keyboard), and wonder what in the world the context was. Sometimes it comes to me. Sometimes, I just have to let the mystery be.

These are easy. Yesterday, I helped a family member put up some gutters on his house. Given that we had no training, no instructions (None. Seriously-- the packaging came with not a whit of instructions on it.), and no experience between us, I think that we did pretty well. This will keep the rain off when walking out the back porch, anyway. I'm going to do this for my back porch, now.

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This one's easy, too. For our anniversary, my wife and I went into Dallas, and dined at Mi Piaci, (where we toured the wine cellar. I had no idea that they had a wine cellar. If you've been there before, please know that the service has gotten a LOT less snooty, yet is still superb.) and stayed at a nice hotel, before wondering around Dallas the next day (Friday, 1 Mar 2013). We played at the bizarre Klyde Warren Park (which is situated over 9 lanes of Woodall Rogers Freeway), and walked into the Dallas Museum Of Art.

I saw the sheet metal fixture shown above (Sorry for the blurry picture. Low light, and crappy camera phone.) on the wall, which is clearly made up of air ducting. I went past, then stopped, and asked one of the dozens (scores?) of museum personnel in a blue blazer if that was a piece, or simply infrastructure. He assured me that it was a piece. I almost laughed, but stopped down for a second. In a moment of meta-artistic consideration, I thought about the few times that I have tried to cut and form sheet metal, and then get it to connect its seams tightly. It's actually more difficult than you might think. Yet it's true that every week, thousands and thousands of tradesmen (and women) do such work, leaving custom ducts and plenums (plena?) in attics and utility closets to perform their functions in the dark, gathering dust often without the appraisal of even the person who paid for them. I submit that such everyday achievements of craftsmanship might well attain the status of art, if we took time to appreciate what it took to achieve them. I took a closer look at the piece. The joints were handcut with snips, and screwed together with sheetmetal screws. I thought about that a day later, when I was customizing sheetmetal gutters with tinsnips and self-tapping sheetmetal screws.

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 I.... I have no idea. I don't remember where I was exactly when I took this. I do recall that I thought that it wasn't really what you would expect a such a location.
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At a local tire shop. Service (and education) are dead.
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It's sad how much I enjoy the cheapest foods. Basmati, red beans, and some Thai chili paste. Mmmm-mmm!
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 This is years' worth of bottle caps, saved for some unknown reason at first. Now my sculpture wife has an idea to put them onto a wooden fish, as scales. Might be kinda fun, in a kitsch sort of way.
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 Another piece from Asian collection at the DMA.
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 From a party for a good friend who joined the Texas DPS state troopers. His father in-law put up a trap and skeet shoot, in which we shot a game called "Wolf Pack." It was $5 a gun to shoot each round, with the winner getting half the pot, and the other half going to a charity. We raised over $200 for the charity, and had a lot of fun doing it.
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 ALWAYS turn the light before using the restroom at night, in the volunteer fire department dormitory.
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Panic-buying at Cabella's, January, 2013. Those are mostly some esoteric rounds left on the ammo shelf. No .38. No 9mm. No .45acp. No .22 LR.
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