Basement Man

I love the basement in our house. The wife is afraid of the place and the kids are not allowed down there. It is literally my secret underground lair where all kinds of godless and pantless acts take place.

If and when Noah and Tegan (Martha's step-brother and his old lady) move to the Twin Cities I am thinking of setting up a bar down there with darts and maybe even a pinball machine. Those Oregon kids love pinball.

My basement is actually a pretty cool place. I've done some good work down there. It has ambience. It has personality. It's warm on account of the water heater, the gas furnace and the 4ft thick stone walls. It has a sink to piss in. I found a dead bird down there last week. Probably fell down the chimney after dying from carbon monoxide poisoning, poor little bastard. I dance down there, alone. I listen to music. I drink. I draw. I look at old slides that I project onto a door that leans up against a wall.

I think a crude workingman's bar is a logical next step for this basement. It can be accessed from inside the house (via a door off the laundry room) or from outside the house (via a door around the side). The stairs is too narrow to allow a pool table to be brought in but plenty wide for a pinball machine. I reserve the right to refuse admission to anyone I think will not appreciate the virtues of my basement bar. I'm open to suggestions for a name. "The Man Hole" and "The Cockpit" have already been considered and shot down so try harder please Noah.

Inishturkbeg

Probably the most amazing thing (LINK) I will see today on the internet.

William Christenberry

Our trip to New York is getting closer. I found out the other night that the stars have aligned in such a way that I will get to see the William Christenberry ((LINK), (LINK)) show at the Pace/MacGill Gallery.

Yep, everything is comin' up Millhouse.

NYC

Martha turns 30 years old next month. I've known her since 2001. We are ditching the girls in Wisconsin with Grandma and Papa and going to New York City for a few days of kid-free fun to celebrate her birthday. I've been to a few exotic and weird places in my time but the thought of going to New York has the rare ability to get me excited in ways that other destinations do not. I haven't been in the Big Apple since I was 17 years old. It's been too long. I need this.

Martha’s brother Ian ((LINK), (LINK)) lives there, in Queens. He is a jazz musician (plays piano and guitar) and has toiled hard at his craft such that all his income now comes from gigs. We'll spend plenty of time with him.

There is an overwhelming number of things to do and see and eat and drink in New York. My list of must-do things contains but two items, The Drawing Center (LINK) and any sushi restaurant that is similar to the ones I saw in San Francisco last year where the customers pluck rolls from little sushi filled boats that sail continuously around a closed-loop stream. Search on YouTube (LINK) to see what I am talking about. I don't even like sushi but there was something peaceful and wonderful about those little boats that captivated me.

Fire & Ice

I'm working on a project to entomb my outdoor wood-stove in a dome of solid ice. This involves building up layers of snow and then pouring water on top to expedite the freezing process. When I am happy with the size and quality of the dome I will light a fire in the stove and melt the ice tomb from deep inside its core. It's important to keep busy during the long winter.

History Project

Slide projectors have been on my mind for the past four or five years. I remember when I was a lad I thought it would be a clever idea to take apart my parents projector and use the components to make my own, out of a shoe box. Needless to say it was a disastrous project. Reverse engineering has never been my strong suit. I inherited a collection of old slides from my folks a few years ago. They then sat in a drawer at my house for a few dozen months until I permanently borrowed a slide projector from my mother-in-law. I have the projector set up in the basement and from time to time I will go down into the bowels of the house and beam a few slides onto the wall.

A few years ago I got a projector from the mother-in-law. Last night I set it up in the basement and viewed a few of my parents slides from the 1970's. I came across a street scene in Ireland. I saw that there was a pub in the photo, "The Ensign". What a strange name for a pub.

I used Google to locate the pub and was able to get a present day photo. Turns out the pub is in Monkstown, Co. Cork. Follow this link (LINK) for a spot the difference of the street scene then and now. The limited color palette of the old days is pleasing to the eye compared to the garish tones of today.

The slides are mostly a record of their days before the arrival of multiple offspring. That is a world that I know little about so these slides are an interesting glimpse inside that world. Frozen moments of Ireland in the 1970's confirm a beauty and uniqueness that I can only hope will exist forever.

Ice Meteorites

Found these weird metal objects frozen inside large blocks of ice in my backyard this morning. They either came from space or fell off an airplane. Their purpose I cannot determine.