This mother truckin’ Inuit knife and breadboard bowl set drops it like it’s hot and then crushes it! Did you club a seal today and need to skin it? Did your redneck neighbor pass out on your front porch again and it’s time to cut off his mullet? Or hey, maybe you just got some fresh strawberries from Trader Joe’s and you’re looking to make some shortcake, yum! Brother this is THE knife and breadboard set for you, because it’s been doing all that and more for a couple millenia. That knife warns you too, DON’T MESS WITH ME, I’LL CUT YOU. Look at those eyes. Those are not teddy bears, friend. Those bears mean business. Now it’s about time to chop those carrots and olives into oblivion, but don’t worry, they’re gonna keep safe in this bowl. No rolling around gonna happen. All in all these tools will make your chopping a breeze, and they might even protect you from a home invasion.

New invention - I think I’ll call it the MOTHERLOAD.  Please feast your eyes:

You can also tell I’ve been drawing way too many details at work lately.

The past couple weeks, I’ve been inspecting post office buildings across Kansas.  At first I was excited for the opportunity to get out of the office, but after doing a couple of them I started getting tired of transcribing manufacturer and model information on panel boards.  But today was actually really interesting.  I went down to Emporia to check out their place first.  It was actually a wealth of information of mechanical systems.  Surprisingly I hadn’t seen much about what goes into a modern HVAC system in 5 years of practice.  So I had a lot of catching up to do, and this was definitely jumping in head first.  They had equipment there I’d never even heard of.  I finally saw the culmination of what mankind has invented to keep a building at 72 degrees year round.  Hoses, tanks, metal boxes, finally they make sense to me.  Plus I keep getting up on the roofs of these places.  I can’t explain why that is so cool, maybe something to do with the height and the fact that not a whole lot of other people go up there, but it is super rad.

Let me tell you something else about post offices.  They all have an inspector’s gallery, which is this elevated hallway that surrounds the workroom (and pretty much every other space), with sneaky slots to look through to make sure people aren’t snooping through the mail.  Very off limits, even to Aimee and me, and we were there to assess the building conditions.  But here’s a picture of what they look like from the outside:

See the black rectangle and circles?  They’re louvers so that the inspectors can see out without anyone knowing they’re even up there.  “How could you miss seeing the inspector in the building” you ask?  They go straight into the gallery from a special door outside! Plus the inspectors carry a sidearm because “BITCHES TAMPERING WITH THE MAIL IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE!!!”

Another interesting part of Emporia’s post office was that they rent out the upstairs for people who want small office spaces.  And one of them, maybe a lawyer or something, had his place ransacked yesterday!  I’ve never been or even seen a place that had been so incredibly upended.  Papers everywhere, furniture turned over, office supplies splayed broken on the ground… it was just like on TV.  I wanted to find out what happened so badly… but the look on our escort’s face definitely said he wasn’t allowed to talk about it.

After Emporia, Aimee and I headed over to Osage City - a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, not that it’s bad at all.  It was a charming town.  Their post office was much less complicated, but really beautiful.  It definitely needed some help with a restoration, but you could see how much craftsmanship had been put into the place, almost a hundred years ago.  In fact, when the postmistress (?) was looking for building records, she found the original construction photos from around 1914.  They dug out the foundation using mules!!!

One more post office to go, then lots and lots of data entry.  :-/

Found on the door of the bathroom in a kindergarten class I was working in today:

Look, I’ve got a lot of time on my hands.  I’ve read a carousel of unemployment blogs, and nothing has really caught my eye.  So I’m dedicating a space on my blog for some special “unemployment coverage”.

I’d like to open the forum to some unemployed art!  Submit your best poems, paintings, photoshoppings, graphics… whatever.

I’ll lead off with a quick haiku.

Stimulus Package,
Sexy fiscal management…
Make it rain on us!

Feel free to add your own in the comments.

Quiet Predator…
Spontaneous Combustion
You thought it was myth?

Man walks along rug
Wearing nylon coat with wool.
Crash, bang, then he’s gone!

Cat sits in the sun
Too long being lazy, hairy friend
Kaboom!  The fur fries!

I like to think that if I was young and in Aspen in the 70’s, I would have been great friends with Hunter S. Thompson - hanging out at Owl Farm, romping around with guns and dropping acid in agrestic chaos…  I’ve always been a sucker for the handsome bad boys.  Hey, a girl can dream.

So with that in mind, here’s the trailer for Gonzo, a biography of Hunter S. Thompson:

I saw it earlier today, and it was a really great step into the life of a person that I’ve always wished I could have met.  I loved the interviews with his first wife Sondi; I have major respect for George McGovern; and everything about Thompson just made him look more badass than before.  It was like a condensed version of the feeling you get when you read his books.  Essentially it was condensed versions of his books, along with their back story.  I had a hard time getting back to reality after it was over, and like his friends said, I wish there was more.

Last weekend I saw this baby on e-bay for $5, and quickly bid on it.

And somehow, some other lunatic outbid me at 2 in the morning! Seriously? Who else besides me has this poor taste? I feel the need to meet the person who successfully bought this painting. Could it be my new best friend?