Downtown La Crosse

Stephanie and I took a short walk around downtown with the camera, and despite the cloudy evening managed to get some nice pictures of some of the more historic buildings. We finished the evening with poboys at Buzzard Billy’s restaurant.

Historic Downtown La Crosse Historic Downtown La Crosse
Historic Downtown La Crosse Historic Downtown La Crosse
Historic Downtown La Crosse Erickson's Flour

More pictures are available on my flickr account as well.

Recipe Time: Pea-Free Hummus

This was my favorite hummus until just recently when Stephanie outdid herself again with a new creation (to be featured eventually).  But this one is pretty terrific and offers some kick to it as well.

Ingredients:

  • 1 12 oz. block soft tofu, drained
  • 1 package (8 oz) feta cheese
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 6-10 sprigs fresh thyme
  • 6 tsp. tomato sauce
  • paprika
  • salt
  • olive oil

Place tofu, garlic and 6 sprigs thyme in food processor and process until smooth. Add tomato sauce and feta and blend until smooth. Add paprika and salt to taste. Pulse while adding olive oil until desired consistency is reached. Season again to taste, adding thyme as needed.

Pictures From Visit

A recent visit home to the parents this past weekend produced a few more pictures.

Kitchen Clones   JD Portraits

JD Portraits   Monument

Job Prospect

Early spring is not the most aesthetic time of year.  Dull browns and grays run together in wet smears, and the retreating snow reveals its winter-long aggregation of garbage and dog shit.  Still, there is a sense of impending improvement, along with an increasing agitation and impatience for hot, sunny days.

Map image

I’ve been introduced to a job possibility by Stephanie, through one of her friends who works at a screen printing company.  It’s for an office position, full time weekday 9-5 type of work, which would be wonderful right now.  Getting tired of the home-health I’m in now, particularly the short hours and split shifts that still manage to consume the entire day.

The only drawback to this is the location, rather far out in Onalaska.  Not driving, it would involve a bus ride north and then a transfer to the shared-ride taxi service, which while cheap would be time-consuming.  I don’t feel like I can be very picky at this point, having been in need of full-time work for a while, and the manner in which this opportunity availed itself suggests it would be a mistake not to take advantage of this.  After all, one can keep looking for something closer to home in the meantime.

Time Travel

Old Timey

I’m not sure what reaction those shoes would have garnered in the 19th century.  Rather simple grunge edit:  Separate highlight/shadow and contrast adjustments for figure and background, gaussian blur to upper half of background, film grain, and free brushes from the Adobe exchange.  See (almost) original image, after exposure fix.

New Silversark Photos

Taking advantage of the above-freezing temps, Stephanie and I did photos of a couple of new outfits she has made.  Unfortunately the sun disappeared just before we started and created a bit of a challenge with the snow and contrast.

I am getting incredibly impatient for spring; so many pictures to take!

Black Jumperskirt Plaid Flocked Dress

A Better MySpace

If you’re a MySpace user, you are undoubtedly familiar with the unmitigated load of crap that assaults the screen when you go to check the latest inane bulletins by people you don’t really talk to. Ads promotions clutter and distract and generally make an already sad experience even worse. But with a few simple tweaks, you can clean up the interface, as you can see here:

new_myspace

This keeps everything you need in a much simpler, uncluttered format. It’s pretty easy to do as well if you already use Firefox. Here’s what you need for these same results:

Once done, simply make sure you are using the “new skin” on your MySpace homepage.

switch

There you have it! Never be annoyed by all that junk again.

Weathering frozen-like

Here are some pretty and clichéd pictures of snow in trees from this morning. Now it’s just…raining or something.

Shades of Blue, Part 2

I’ll try to be less cynical this time.

The fashion show has been a long staple at the Shades of Blue show, and gives the Vatican PX clothing store exposure. VPX, an extension of The Warehouse, brings down their entire stock to the show; lots of Lip Service, Adeline, Lucky 13, etc.

This year Stephanie signed on and did three shows over the 3 day exposition. Still learning our new camera, I wasn’t particularly pleased with how the stills came out, not yet having an external flash. So the next day I just took video - here is the entire show, unedited.


Shades of Blue, Part 1

Stephanie and I recently attended the annual Shades of Blue tattoo show in La Crosse. I should say I attended, and Stephanie participated, at least in the Vatican PX fashion show portion. No tattoos.

The tattoos come in all manner of horrible - from obese pale legs covered in a random menagerie of clip-art quality pieces, to obese pale legs covered in cliched tattoos of dream catchers, eagles and wolves. It’s like going to an art exhibit of shitty colored pencil drawings all done on terrible yellowed paper. And you could veritably smell the hepatitis in the air.

Fortunately the show does offer other attractions, including the VPX fashion show. The VPX is a small clothing store that is part of the closest thing La Crosse has to a club, The Warehouse - home to dozens of mopey 14 year old shoe-gazers. VPX is where you need to go if you have a desire to take on an edgy urban look, or perhaps some PVC for the next time you go dry-humping on the dance floor of your favorite club. More on the fashion show and Stephanie’s participation in Part 2.

Before the fashion show, however, are the belly-dancers; always entertaining to watch multiple generations of Midwestern women gyrating simultaneously. The gastric undulations and blaring eastern-Mediterranean pop music certainly sets the mood for the fashion show.

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The other event that makes pushing your way around leather skinned bar floozies worthwhile is the suspension show. This year it opened with several mediocre side show acts, including hammering a nail into ones head (via nasal sinuses), walking and later jumping into broken glass and needles through cheeks and hands. The actual suspension then follows, with two people hoisted up where they swing, fight, and later give rides to the ladies.

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Of course, see the gallery for all the images. Naturally there is video as well: