Christchurch Taken from Tisa's original journal entry: Christchurch- (population: 331,400) This city is described as the most English of NZ cities. A grand Anglican cathedral sits in the center of the city, trolleys and trams run through the square while the Avon River runs alongside it. Kevin and I really enjoyed this town for many reasons. For one, our campsite was in a great location near downtown. It had clean facilities, we were able to park 10 feet away from the restroom (which means a lot when its late at night and the last thing you want to do is get up to use the restroom) and we even purchased a “Top 10 Holiday Park” Discount Card that got us a discount for the first and following nights of our stay there. I highly recommend that if anyone runs into an offer of purchasing this card, that they do so. The Top 10 Holiday Parks is an association with campgrounds all over New Zealand and even some in the U.S. They are the best of the best and are always clean, safe, accommodating, generally good locations and usually have a spa, heated pool or internet for an additional fee. At most of the campgrounds you are able to get a cabin or personal room. With this card, we are also able to get discounts at certain participating restaurants, hotels, adventure activities and more. Secondly, we loved the service we received while dining out and using the internet cafes! One of our best meals on this trip was found at an Indian restaurant called Mayur that Kevin took me to on a date. Actually, we ate Indian food 4 times within 3 days because it was so tasty. We also had another fine dining experience in the town square. The best thing about New Zealand is that if you want to have a really nice dinner at an upscale restaurant, you are able to afford it because compared to the states, it is only about ½ of what you would pay over there. Regarding the internet cafes, Christchurch had the cheapest ones over any other city in NZ. We found one that was warm and cozy, had a wide variety of drinks, pastries and sandwiches, and was quiet and had a relatively fast connection. Lastly, we really enjoyed the overall character of the town. One night in the middle of downtown, a sports company set up an event where you could snowboard (with a stunt jump), drink beer and listen to music. There are lots of alternative kids here, as any town in NZ, and the city has a very lively feel to it. We even attended a Jazz concert at the Anglican cathedral but were a little disappointed with the performance. There is a lot to explore in this town by simply walking the streets. The church was beautiful as was all the surrounding art and nature of Christchurch.

New Zealand Tunnelweb Spider This is just a short little blurb about an encounter I had with a New Zealand Tunnelweb Spider. To anyone who knows me, it's a well known fact that I am more or less terrified by most anything of the arachnid variety. It's entirely an irrational fear, this I know, but I can't seem to get over it for whatever reason. Thankfully, I think spiders are about the only things that I am afraid of. One relatively warm evening while still living in my flat in Dunedin, I strolled into my bathroom (or toilet) for a quick pee break. So far there was nothing unusual about this sudden urge to urinate. I began peeing and as I looked down to my left, just near the upright shower, was a GIANT New Zealand Tunnelweb spider. Now that I was in a state of complete terror, not to mention mid-stream, instinct kicked in and I immediately stopped my flow and jumped about 6 foot to my left far, far out of harms way. Once I calmed down a bit, I ran to get my camera and though I usually get pretty close to the subject in my nature pics, I kept my distance for this one. These were zoom lens all the way. I tossed an American Quarter on the ground near the spider to give it some perspective. FYI: an American Quarter is just under an inch in diameter. This spider clearly spawned about 2.25 of them. Though the Tunnelweb is about the size of a Tarantula, like the Tarantula, it is not poisonous. Don't confuse it's name with the Australian Funnelweb spider. It, on the other hand, is deadly. Also like our Tarantula, however, this spider can inflict a very painful bite if provoked to do so. If you look between the small front two legs, you can see the very large black fangs touching the ground below. After this whole encounter (with death itself), I did a bunch of research on the particular spider. Though I had seen them around outside, I had not seen one in my bathroom, but that is apparently somewhat normal. As I read, every so often a Tunnelweb spider will find his way into a house and when it does, it becomes severely dehydrated (usually to the point of death). The spider will immediately seek out a source of water with it's sensing tools and this usually lands it either in the bathroom or the laundry room. Apparently sometimes they are able to sustain themselves for awhile in the bathroom as they can live off of the leftover humidity from showers, and drops of water on the floor. Usually though, they wither and die pretty quickly. This one was obviously somewhat resourceful.

Fes, Morocco One of our planned stops across Morocco was the ancient city of Fes. We arrived in the early evening one day and promptly went about trying to find some food to eat. One thing about the ancient Moroccan cities (called Medinas - which is just the Arabic word for "city") is that they have absolutely no rhyme or reason to how they were constructed. Paths and roadways circle around endlessly and it's extremely easy to get lost, especially with the high-walls all around you. Fes would have been a well-fortified city long ago and relics of the old fortress-like structures are visible throughout the town. Fes was also famously known for its tanneries. As is somewhat common for getting tourists to come in, some young kid ran up to us in the street and asked us if we wanted to see his father's tannery. As we did want to see one, we decided to follow him. It was a wonderful experience. They walked us all over the tannery, showed us the hides and the various dyes used, and otherwise explained the process to us. Another interesting thing about Morocco is that they grow an insane amount of marijuana throughout the country. Most people will ask you to try their homemade hash, often bragging about the hash-pressing machine that they or their family had. The tannery we went to was no exception. The owner proudly offered to share a join of his has with us. They wrap a standard cigarette and then sprinkle dried hash all over it before rolling it. It wasn't very strong, but we enjoyed the process of it all. Especially just being randomly offered it while in a shop. Both Ben and I had something fabricated in his leather shop while we waited. I still wear the belt I had fashioned to this very day.

The Ghost and Devin This was an especially fun outing that Claire and I got to do together. Our friends from "The Ghost of Paul Revere" are currently on tour and happened to be making their way through North Carolina over the past week. Claire and I drove the hour or so down south to Brevard, NC to check them out. The show was amazing. In fact, so amazing that one of the local patrons paid the bar so The Ghost could come back on stage and play a few more songs well after they'd finished. Though they'd stayed at my house a few times, I hadn't seen them in a number of years since I had been out of the country the past few times they were in Austin - despite the fact that they stayed in my house. I also had the pleasure of meeting Devin Mauch, one of the founders of The Ballroom Thieves. Devin had done this particularly amazing cover of a Frightened Rabbit song. I spent some time several months back going through all of the covers that I could find of this one particular song and The Ballroom Thieves version was one that stood out the most to me - namely due to the beautiful harmonies and the background cello. In fact, the very first thing I thought of was how The Ghost should also cover the song. I didn't know they were such good friends and so it was a delight hanging out with him.

Two men, one young one older, the young one is dressed up with face paint and a head band, the older one wears a black gimme cap on backwards, they are inside.

one man, one pregnant lady and one lady are here. and one lady has a child infront of her.

Two men, one older, one younger, stand at a shooting station - one is aiming a rifle while the other one waits to shoot.

all four of the people in the group are gathered together smiling to take the picture. Three white young teen girls and a white guy are in very happy mood and giving a pose to the camera in public place A brunette woman in a blue shirt, a blond woman in a printed dress, a bearded man, and w blond woman with wearing a necklace take a group photo while smiling at the camera. There are three Caucasians people and one woman that looks like she has some Mexican decent in her blood all smiling at the camera. four wide smiling people, three women and one man, two blonde women one brunette, the man with beard and bangs wearing a purple shirt, many small lamps in the room There are four people taking a picture here. Three of them seem caucasian because they are blondes, but the women on the far left does not seem caucasian. They are very well dress for this special event. And they are all smiling in this picture. There are three woman and a man smiling, among which two women are blonde and one is with black hair. An o

The Super Sperm photo 269708 269893 300 right The MicroFilm machine at the University of Texas PCL I needed this little device to grab all of the old stills photo In the summer of 2000 I was living in a SCUBA diving town in Mexico called Akumal It translates to Place of the Turtle in Mayan I was working as a research dive assistant for a Ph D student at the University of Texas A few months before moving there I had started sketching out a silly comic hero named SuperSperm Much like Superman SuperSperm would try to bring peace and harmony to the world The only difference was that it was a world full of sperm and sperm cities The sperm world had all of the same basic characteristics that our own world had only instead of humans there were sperm There was an outdoor whiteboard at the dive shop in Akumal The instructors would often use it for teaching their day classes One morning before anyone else had showed up I took the whiteboard markers and drew a SuperSperm comic on it I cannot for the life of me remember what the comic was about but a couple of people chuckled at it and I was hooked From that day on any time that I could come up with something relevant to what was going on at the shop I d draw a SuperSperm comic strip representing it This went on for a few weeks until one day I was told to stop Mexico is a pretty conservative Catholic destination and evidently not everyone was amused with the content of my drawings Evidently it was not proper to satirize Superman with a caped sperm I drew a few more on the whiteboard after that but always made sure to erase them before paying customers would arrive I was part of a non paying research team When I returned back to Austin after the summer expedition I decided I would try to have the comic published in our school newspaper a href http en wikipedia org wiki The_Daily_Texan The Daily Texan a I contacted the editor and he said that they were always happy to receive more student content He also said that it would be published if they liked it Of course I immediately jumped on the chance to have my work published Despite having absolutely no artistic talent at least with respect to drawing it didn t take me long to come up with a sperm themed joke and sketch it out I even ran it down to the editor s office that very night And so on Thursday October 5th 2000 my first SuperSperm comic strip was published in The Daily Texan I have no idea how many people actually saw the comic but I know it was in the hands of about 30 000 Over the course of about two weeks there were six published Unfortunately due to some bad luck this would end the comic series em continued below em photo 269919 269893 0 center SuperSperm Thursday October 5th 2000 The EarthQuake br With 200 million missing and feared dead SuperSperm has been dispatched photo photo 269897 269893 0 center SuperSperm Monday October 9th 2000 Washington br SuperSperm addresses the nation photo photo 269898 269893 0 center SuperSperm Tuesday October 10th 2000 Fame br SuperSperm stares at his first endorsement em Sperm Lights Genuine Taste em photo photo 269894 269893 0 center SuperSperm Thursday October 12th 2000 The Museum br SuperSperm admires the Hall of Swimmers photo photo 269896 269893 0 center SuperSperm Friday October 13th 2000 The Natives br Totonka Buffalo photo photo 269895 269893 0 center SuperSperm Monday October 16th 2000 Explorer br SuperSperm finds himself in a mysteriously moist cave photo br style clear both In the fall semester of 2000 I was in between apartments My girlfriend at the time Dayna allowed me to stay with her pretty frequently and so naturally I did It was a great arrangement for me every night I was there except for one the night that my truck got broken into The truck was parked immediately outside of her apartment Presumably anybody who was outside would have witnessed the break in but unfortunately there were no such witnesses Somewhat ironically the burglars used lead SCUBA weights from the bed of the truck to break one of the windows and unlock the doors I found it on the floor in a puddle of glass Those Catholics in Mexico had finally taken their revenge In addition to having my speakers ripped out my CD collection stolen and everything else that comes with a vehicle break in my school backpack containing weeks worth of SuperSperm drawings was also stolen I was definitely pissed about the truck but I was genuinely upset about having lost all of my comic material Since it was never really my dream to become a comic artist I decided that I wouldn t try to overcome losing all of my work It would have taken far too long to recreate everything and my morale was too low to try That was pretty much the end of SuperSperm

Austin Pets Directory div class pageImage img src http www ludlow2014 com themes Default images Blog AustinPetsDirectory_bothpages jpg alt Austin Pets Directory class alignright size full wp image 252 br The campaign spread in the Austin Pets Directory div One of the best parts of running a political campaign is getting to meet new people in all sorts of life experiences One of those people I stumbled across happens to be one of Austin s most amazing by the name of Liz Parker Liz is the city s go to for all things related to dogs She is a volunteer at the Austin Animal Shelter Austin Pets Alive and also happens to own a local print magazine called a href http www austinpetsdirectory com Austin Pets Directory a And wouldn t you know it she wanted to do a story about the campaign in her magazine We had a great time with it and I love the writeup she did The article reads as follows Kevin Ludlow is a lot of things He s a writer musician a successful owner and operator of a software firm an avid animal lover and most notably he is a candidate for the Texas House of Representatives in District 46 He is passionate but thoughtful and pretty brilliant There are a few people who make the world a better place and we think Kevin Ludlow is one of them A Houston native we love em almost em everything about him and 16 year Austin resident Kevin has always had a penchant for both writing and political activism His involvement with civic activities began when he was a student at the University of Texas at Austin After graduating with a BA in mathematics in 2003 Ludlow traveled to New Zealand where he lived for a year After returning to Austin Kevin returned to writing He was inspired by the feedback his political musings received and in 2012 that feedback fueled his drive to publish a book em American Healthcare A Moderate Approach em In August of the same year Ludlow along with Jad Davis founded the JKPodcast a weekly political science podcast The show quickly grew in popularity and has thousands of listeners When Kevin decided to run for office he never imagined getting this far I thought if I can get even 16 of the votes that s a huge accomplishment he says But the Libertarian party had other plans Thanks to the party and its volunteers and thousands of supporters who believe in Ludlow s positions on both state and national issues he has made incredible progress Growing up the Ludlow family had no less than two cats at a time Kevin also enjoyed caring for the family fish gerbils hamsters and even a crawfish named Bob He s also had a Sheltie named Barney the Dog a Chihuahua named Freckles and Senor Taco a dachshund He is a big time fan of the put bull breed and is always pet sitting for friends If you care about issues like drug law reform LGBT marriage and Equality and women s rights or just want to learn more visit Ludlow2014 com