My Tattoo I've been meaning to get a tattoo of a certain logo of mine for years. In my effort to do something 7 nights per week this year I dedicated one of those evenings to this venture. Carly and Roxanne introduced me to a tattoo artist named Mig who did exactly what I wanted. The hard part was coming up with the mathematical formula that precisely created the image I wanted.

The El Chile Deck I'm planning on building a deck in my backyard that very closely resembles that of the El Chile deck on Manor Road. I had dinner there with Claire, Corky, and a few other friends and shot a bunch of pics for my own reference.

Shanghai River Cruise My friend Abel has a sister who lives in Shanghai and she suggested that we take one of the river cruises. We did and since she had never been on it before, we took her along with us. The river cruise was absolutely beautiful and we couldn't have picked a better night to explore the Bund area.

Guangzhou Metro Partially so that we could visit the factories in Foshan, and partially so that we could visit the Canton fair, Ben and I wound up staying in Guangzhou for 3 days during our Chinese expedition. In fact, we even celebrated Ben's 28th birthday with our translator at the W in the city. This was probably the single most crowded and chaotic city I have ever visited in my life. I really loved the experience, but it was incredibly exhausting at the same time.

Mount Xiqiao While looking through the Wiki page for the Guangzhou area I came across some pictures of Mount Xiqiao. After talking with our factory friends about the place and then talking to our translator about it, we were told it was a very famous Buddhist destination and that we might consider checking it out. They cautioned us though that it was bad luck to visit the temple if you were in a relationship as it normally meant your relationship would end soon after.

The Purple Party As part of the Long Center's 7th anniversary party, they hired the Blue's Brothers for the evening and had a charity gala. Yes, that's the Blue's Brothers with Dan Akyroyd and Jim Belushi (of course originally John Belushi). My friend Karen was able to get me two extra tickets, one so I could get Roxanne in to see Carly, and one so that I could take Brooke. We showed up fashionably late, but my goal was to see Carly's last show, not so much the Blue's Brothers.

Last Continental T-Bird Show With the sad news that T-Bird and the Breaks would be breaking up, I made sure to check out their last few shows. This was the last time they'd play the Continental Club as a band. They put on a really great show.

The Shark Balloon Claire had an inflatable shark that was attached to a remote control and could be flown around a room. Unfortunately it broke and she lost the remote. We filled it taught with helium, attached a note to it, and set it adrift.

Art Prize 7 For the 3rd time I have managed to make it up to Grand Rapids for the fabulous Art Prize. Brooke and I had such an amazing time hanging out with Mark and Dana at their house in the sky. We saw some amazing art and met some amazing people.

The Jaws Van This is perhaps one of the most amazing vans I have ever seen in my life. The guy who owns this van is apparently pretty good friends with one of my dearest friends. He was kind enough to give us a tour of the van. Even though it was near 30 years old it had a mere 14,000 miles on it. I would happily drive this piece of art.