Zoso Halloween Pumpkin One of the first fancy pumpkins that I ever created. As is probably the case with a lot of college apartments, ours was covered with posters of Led Zeppelin, and I thought it would be appropriate to transfer the 'Stairway to Heaven' poster onto the pumpkin. Here is the commentary from my original website: Introduction While living at the Duval Street apartment, my roommates and I had quite an elaborate display of crap in front of our apartment door. Most of this was designed / put in place by none other than me. We had a park bench, an assortment of fruits and vegetables, plants, a 400 pound wooden Shiner Beer bottle, and for Halloween of 1998, a cool pumpkin. Seeing on how our apartment was a common ground of music lovers and such (we had the full band setup in the apartment), I guess classic rock was always something that everyone could agree upon, regardless of their specific music tastes. And of course somewhere atop everyone's classic rock stack is a collection of Led Zeppelin. I wanted to make a cool looking pumpkin that everyone would find some interest in and so I looked to Led Zeppelin. Perhaps one of the most known symbols (at least to the LedHeads) is Jimmy Page's "Zoso".

Making the Pumpkin The process of making a "Zoso" pumpkin is actually pretty simple. 1. Go to your local pumpkin patch 2. Pick out a nice looking 8 pounder 3. Pull out all of those tasty pumpkin guts 4. Surf the web for a picture of the Zofo logo 5. Print the picture and tape it to the pumpkin 6. Use a tack to outline the picture 7. Remove the picture and cut away on the tack holes Thats about it. For anyone who is mildly curious as to what in the hell Zoso means, I couldn't tell you. I've read far too many accounts to really speculate where it came from but the simplest one is that Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were looking at calligraphy-like symbols. Jimmy Page found one that he liked and apparently the symbol 'sounded' like "Zoso" (apparently pronounced Zo-So). From that point on, it was sort of a trademark of his. For any of those now curious as to who the hell Jimmy Page is, he is/was the guitarist of Led Zeppelin and is credited with being one of the more (if not most) famous classic rock guitarists.

Kim & Daniel's Wedding After Party After a rather fantastic party at the Hobby Center, we moved the party over the double-suite that my parents had in the DoubleTree on Dallas and Bagby. Tracy, Dave, and I stopped off at a gas station on the way over there and I purchased a large variety of beer, girly beer, and wine. As we got to the hotel, I naturally got one of the luggage carts so that I could get all of the beer up to the room when one of the guests sitting downstairs joked 'Are you having a party?'. I said we might be and they could come on over. She smiled and responded that if they caught me with all of that beer they would ask me to leave. I laughed and continued loading prompting her to repeat what she had said with an "...I'm serious" at the end of it. So long story short, evidently it is a rule of that particular DoubleTree that you can't give any sort of hint of having a party?!? Needless to say I covered all of it with a towel and proceeded up the elevator in stealth.

Tube Kujda 2008 River Pics To our dear friend Mr. Jason Kujda, thanks once more for putting on a spectacular event for all of us. As promised, the bus departed just around 10am and made it to Abbott's Tube Rentals with only one stop in between. Everything was lined up for us completely ready to go and of course Kujda had the beer and mini-coolers handy for everyone just as he had promised. The river trip was particularly enjoyable with the group we had. Surprisingly everyone managed to stay together, even through the 'rapids' and such. Had I not accidentally been [album=543]stabbed through the hand[/album] with a pocketknife as we ended the trip, I would say that the trip couldn't have gone any better for me. Unfortunately, I was rushed away to the hospital so that I could be [photo=22014-543]sutured up[/photo].

A Near Fatal Stabbing So just as the most perfect [album=542]Tube Kujda[/album] trip was winding down, and we were all out of the water, the trip took a rather unexpected turn. Fortunately I had already cleaned out my cooler, deflated all of my extra inner tubes, and was otherwise ready to get on the bus. The only thing left to do was sever the ropes securing my cooler into the tube. However it happened, the knife that I used slipped through the rope and punctured deep into my left hand. Enough so that I had to remove the knife from my hand. Recognizing that I had a rather serious injury, I calmly walked over to Kujda and said, "Jason, I need your help." He told me to wait a second as he was talking to someone. Again I explained, "Jason, I have a very serious problem I need your help with..." He gave me his attention at this point and as I removed my right hand (from squeezing off the wound), he saw the blood running out of my hand. Kujda rushed me over to the little tuber's pavillion with the emergency look in his eye (instead of the normal twinkle). To say the very least, the guys at the tube rental place were more than helpful and quick to take charge. Unfortunately the best they could do was pour some peroxide into it and wrap it up. Oh the burn ;) There was an ambulance and some EMT guys over at the Rudy's (where the bus took everyone to eat) and I had them look at it. As the EMT cut off my bandage he shouted "Holy shit, that's a bad cut". Should you ever be the EMT in this situation, please know that the man claiming to have been stabbed is aware he has a 'bad cut'. Anyway, Jake and Paula happened to drive themselves to the river and were ever so gracious to drive me back to Austin so I could be tended to at Seton Medical Center. Once I got there I was almost immediately taken into triage and given a room. About 45 minutes later (and not without some painful moments) I walked out of there with 3 stitches in my left hand and a bag of goodies needed to tend the wound.

Dinner in Houston Before meeting up with Liz and the Galbinceas for the Renaissance Fair, I went out with the Houston crew. We enjoyed a little Collina's before I met up with DaveG out at the Big Star Bar and happened to run into none other than Pete!

Rymo Records - Day 2 This was the second day that I spent with Rymo and his record label at the Florida Music Festival. It turned out to be a pretty badass afternoon as I got to check out bands all over the place, rock out on a variety of guitars and pianos at the Gibson studio, and otherwise have a pretty awesome time with Rymo (as per my usual). I even got to board the Gibson bus and rock out with some pretty amazing guitarists and bassists. I'm no pro, but I can usually hold my own. The end of the evening was particularly amusing when we came across someone caring for a wild baby bobcat.

Cotton Bowl with Dreux Since Dreux makes his way up to the Cotton Bowl almost every year, he thought I might want to join him. We made the trip up on Friday afternoon and stayed with Krista's dad, Joe Edwards. After a night out with Dayna and Nick, Dreux and I headed to the Texas State Fair pretty early in the morning. Dreux wanted to look at a few of the new cars (they have a huge car show there) before heading off to the game. Unfortunately UT was beaten pretty badly by OU, but Dreux and I had a great time. The only downside was getting a flat tire on the way home, but fortunately I'm able to change those in just a few minutes time!

4th of July 1999 While I was living in New York City and attending NYU, a girl that I started dating there invited me down to Washington, DC to spend the 4th of July weekend with some of her friends. We took the bus from the city to my uncle's house in Old Bridge (where my truck was) and drove the truck down 95 to DC. The first night we were there we stayed with my cousin and his wife (Ryan and Kirsten), but stayed with Colleen's friends the next night.

Garner State Park Tent Over the summer I spent a week in Garner State Park with Kujda's extended family and friends. Since we were in the middle of a drought and the temperatures were in the high 90s and low 100s every day, it was pretty difficult for me to sleep. So, I engineered up a crafty one-person tent with dual fans, a built in window-unit A/C, and all sorts of other fixings (including internet complete with Netflix).

Perdido Beach On our second day in Fairhope, we took Caroline's grandmother to the beach with us. We were really just going so that Brewster could play in the water. Unfortunately he was terrible about fetching since he constantly would get distracted with so many other things going on. The highlight was when he was standing in the water and a SCUBA diver emerged about 50 feet away. It scared the hell out of Brewster and he continued barking at the guy until we actually walked away with him. Caroline contended that it's okay to be scared of a random man suddenly emerging from the water in front of you.