easter parade

lisa and her pugs, mochi & olive, strike again : 1st place at the haute dog easter parade!











thanks for sharing your great victory with us, lisa!

annie: starting bid = 99 cents

i make one comment, "whatever sells, we can buy more furniture with" and an ebay/craiglist monster was born.



i honestly thought it's more fun to shop those places than sell. dabney has proven me wrong. she takes delight in seeing new "watchers" and has a eagle-eye on her number of bids. it's her new internet obsession (replacing perez hilton and STL real estate ads) and she keeps combing the apartment for new items that she can market.

at this rate, i am hoping this entire apartment will soon go up for an ebay auction. less to pack.

don't be surprised if you soon see an ebay ad for a short (but big for her inches) and somewhat useful asian girl girl from missouri. starting bid = 99 cents.

puppy yearning

this picture KILLS me.



those little wrinkles on her paws! that belly! i don't know who she belongs to, but i just want to bite her. take her, squeeze her, and rub that little belly.

sorry, moms and moms-to-be

because so many of you out there are either: a) thinking about having children, b) in the process of trying to get preggers, c) actually anticipating a birth in the near future, or d) have a child(ren) - i should clarify my feelings on the boston globe article on the influx of babies in our neighborhood. i also apologize.

i certainly don't mean to offend, but i guess IT WAS THAT DAMN SLIDESHOW that got my goat. i've witnessed a whirlwind of change in the south end since i chose to settle here in 1996. i've seen packies become cafés, gay bookstores become $30+ entree restaurants, and gas stations become ateliers. the moms in those pictures represent to me the changing face of neighborhood in general and it wasn't because they're moms. i guess if the slideshow had featured four young chinese mothers from castle square i might not have had the reaction that i did. but there they were -- pushing their matching bugaboos, going to baby beethoven classes, lunching... it just drove me nuts. the moms and their bugaboos are simply an easy target at which to point fingers. my finger and of course, this dude's.

we recently received a friendly note from a realtor who we worked with this time last year as we were looking to move to dorchester. at the time, she got a kick out of us leaving the south end for dot. her notecard happily mentioned that many of our neighbors have been packing up and moving to the savin and jones hill areas, and of course, employing her services. sigh. point made.

it's time to get out of dodge.

a must download

attention all you flickrers/flickrites*: this might be the coolest firefox** add-on out there. piclens allows you to scroll through any number of photos with lightning speed. it looks and works a lot like the "cover flow" feature in itunes. i really am loving this folks.



no more endless minutes spent searching for that one group shot from 4th of july 2005. just flip through and PRESTO - you've got it.

did i mention it's free?

*works with IE (do you really use IE still?) and safari, too.

**works with google and yahoo image searches, too.

just zip it, globe

just as we've grown comfortable with our decision to leave the area, the boston globe has to go and inform us that we live in boston's best zip code (and not just for babies - see yesterday).

who knew?

i had to add my 2 cents...

click to embiggen

yet another reason to move to st. louis...

saturday's boston globe article on the south end baby boom just confirmed our observations - the influx of baby carriages on south end sidewalks is not just a figment of our imaginations.

it's time to get out of dodge... see the globe's slideshow here.

this mysterious neighbor's response, while a bit extreme perhaps, cracked me up.

another reason to move to st. louis...

... to have an unlimited supply of dad's oatmeal cookies.

click the pic to hear their catchy jingle.

mad embroidery

how brilliant is sonia clarke's "afro abe?"


if i lived in nyc, i would definitely go and check out the current show at the museum of arts & design, pricked: extreme embroidery. the exhibition continues through april 27.

babies #2

this time around, the stork has been busy dropping off seconds. over the weekend, my old college roomie reported that she is now a mom of two healthy girls. pictures to follow, i am sure.

today, i learned that one of my favorite couples just gave birth for the second time round. i am so excited for them. welcome to the world, carlo! ain't he cute?








a boy after my own heart

mcdreamy

how can you begin to count the stars in the sky?

even though we are many months away from moving into our new space, dabney is on a rampage for interesting and affordable furniture. upon my suggestion that we should hold off until we are actually moved in, dabney retorted - she would not, repeat NOT, say no to a bargain.

thanks to craigslist, she got wind of a local antique store liquidation that listed an eames lounge chair* in its inventory and pounced.

we picked up will, who is always up for an adventure, drove thirty minutes away, and soon discovered the antiques store wasn't just antiques but 20,000 square feet of the most random objects ever assembled under one roof.

the owner, fred, was our guide and keeper. he kept us on a short leash during our visit.





there was an area devoted to brass fittings of every type - perfect for restaurant and bar owners.



there was a nautical room, there was a medieval-themed room, an art gallery, and even a DJ booth...



and in amongst all this stuff, we found some treasures.

a herman miller wall unit that was too big to take home


a mysterious set of solid wood chairs that are reminiscent of danish modern


here they are together. we can't figure out what the funky chairs are on the left, but we thought they were interesting.


and of course, the advertised eames lounge chair.*




now, i am not sure if i live in a house or a furniture store.

*the craiglist description of the chair read like this actually: "eams [sic] style chair - like the one of frazier [sic]"

google geek

between googling, gmailing, and google reading, i have been living in a google world.



i love being able twist and bend these products with all sorts of customizations to make life a little easier. i keep finding more and more goodies. here, i'll share a few:

for those of you who are both gmail and firefox users, this one might be the best. the gmail manager is a firefox add-on that alerts you to new gmail within the status bar of your browser. the days of keeping a tab open, BE GONE.

for those of you who check multiple accounts through gmail, it is now possible to respond with customized signatures tied to different addresses. this one has been really handy for me and my work email account while on the road. click here and just download the script. easy peasy.

for all of you who are addicted to google reader, like moi, don't forget the simple keyboard shortcuts that make it EVEN EASIER to read all your favorite blogs. namely, j = next item, k = previous item, v = view original

got any others you like? please share.

true story...

...that should have come straight from stuff white people like.



oh this? i bought it through craigslist from a young couple who inherited it from their aunt years ago. ann and i drove an hour from st. louis to some small town in illinois to pick it up last month. we got it for $75, and the next week saw a similar one on ebay for 400 bucks. it's swedish and probably mid-century. i know, how great is that?

this old store

the current owners never let go of the building's hardware days literally. its inner sanctum revealed a stash of nails, screws, and hinges that your local home depot would covet.







don't even get me started on the cans of paint.








the basement was a graveyard of old rusty machinery.


an automatic retoother


a remington typewriter


this thingamajig


and this doohickey

the current owners were kind enough to give us dibs on anything we wanted, but our search for any old signage or other paraphenalia from the old hardware store was fruitless. dabney and i took a few boxes of wood screws as souvenirs. the paint and the rusty machines, we left behind. oh, but we did find a couple of amazing items in that basement.



according to the owners, the building was built in 1899 and was originally a meat market. we think that this marriage certificate might have belonged to the market owners. the "svobodas" were from bohemia (currently czech republic) and were married in south st. louis in 1880.

here's another picture of mrs. svoboda we came across. we thought we'd just leave this one in the basement to frighten future treasure hunters.


such sweet eyes

adventures in real estate, pt. 2

after having extended our stay not once, but twice, we thought we'd end up going back to boston empty-handed. this wouldn't have been devastating, but certainly would have thrown off our plans for the upcoming summer.

as a last ditch effort, dabney and i even succumbed to driving the streets of certain STL neighborhoods hoping to find that perfect piece of abandoned property. we overlooked the inevitable hassle of locating the owner and crossing our fingers that s/he would sell. this tactic was more frustrating than anything (not to mention, car sick inducing). there were just so many to pick from.

just when we were about to give up. we stumbled upon an old building with a "for sale by owner" sign on it. not only did it appear to be the right size, lo and behold, the building is even in the exact neighborhood in which we had hoped to settle.

it was love at first sight.

yes, folks, we bought an old storefront. what was once "schwarz hardware store" will be our future home and studio.*








*to answer the obvious: no future mogo store is in the works for the space.