Mark Hayward Is My Hero

If you have always wanted to carve the Best Pumpkin in the World you can get in on the action with this book.

Mark Hayward has just released his first eBook: Pumpkin Carving Tips, Tricks and Patterns.

Even if you don’t want to be the Best in the World and just want to carve a better pumpkin than last year, you should check this out. It’ll be the best $2 you ever spend on Halloween for something that wasn’t covered in chocolate.

A lot of work went in to putting together this first edition of Pumpkin Carving Tips, Tricks and Patterns, and the second edition will be out in time for Halloween next year. The book was written as an enhanced version of Mark’s pumpkin web page.

I met a local magician named Vito a few weeks ago at the Rocky Ripple Fest here in Indianapolis, and yesterday I helped him build a bed of nails.

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We had our annual pumpking carving party Sunday night, and it was a good time as usual.

Many a good pumpkin was carved, and some new tools were even introduced, including a wood-carving chisel set and a eye-gouger/mellon-baller that Richard brought.

This year my pumpkin was not very intricately carved, this time it was all about the fire.

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This weekend I had a couple of gigs in the Chicago area, but I went up a day early to participate in a taping for Chicago Public Access Cable TV.

Harper, Matiss and I showed up with a bag full of juggling machetes and two pumpkins.

We carved this one in advance, and the other was to be carved while we juggled.

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Lenore and I went to the international grocery with our pal David Morrison. It was really fun. David is very much a food guy, so we stopped at the grocery on the way back from one of Dave’s many secret restaurant gems. This time it was a Vietnamese place called Sizzling Wok Hai, and it was delicious.

Even though it happens every time, I am always surprised by how much food there is in the world that I can’t recognize. Of course that’s the real fun of going to an international grocery. My favorite sections are the drink section and the candy section. This time I bought a bottle of Green Plum (soda I think, but I haven’t opened it yet), and a bag of White Rabbit candy.

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There are two alligators in the White River. Seriously. Alligators in Indianapolis. What’s up with that? Some fool must have released their pet gators when they got too big to handle, figuring that having large, dangerous, invasive predators in our city would make life better for everyone. One of the places I normally walk my dog is a wilderness area that is right up against the river, so now I have to wait until they catch the things, or winter comes, before I can go back there. Stupid alligators. Well… stupid people really.

Read the story here. When this story was reported on the TV news last night they interviewed the cop in the photo, and he had seen the gators himself.

I went up to the Fort Wayne juggling festival last weekend. It was fun, and very low key. There were maybe 30 or so people there, so it was much smaller than your average regional jugglefest, but it was a nice little gathering.

There were two things about the fest that were awesome. One was that Tom Miller of the Unicycle factory there, and two, he and other people brought some of his creations.

Tom is the guy you call if you have any bicycle or unicyle related oddball request. He has made all manner of normal and normal-ish unicycles like various heights of giraffe unicycles:

(By the way, it’s called a giraffe when the pedals are higher than the wheel so there is a chain that connects them.) (more…)

Extreme tug-of-war with Vader, the Egyptian Snake Hound.

Today Vader and I were cruising through the woods, as we like to do, and we had been walking for about an hour and a half when just as we were almost back to the car all hell broke loose. One of the things Vader likes to do whenever he has the chance is to chase deer. It’s annoying. Partly because I don’t like it that he is hassling nature, partly because he could get hurt, and partly because he turns into a one-track-mind pursuit machine. Once he’s after a deer, there is pretty much nothing I can do until he tires out or loses the poor beast. Lucky for the deer, they are much faster than Vader. Normally he finds deer one at a time… today he found a clump of four. The chase was actually pretty short since I think he was already tired, but that wasn’t the end of the action.

Shortly after I got him back on track he found something else. He was just in sight way off in the trees, and he was more or less doing his play bark. At first I thought maybe he found some people, then as I got closer it seemed like maybe he was stuck somehow, or maybe had cornered a woodchuck or something. Once I got close I could sort of see what he was barking at, and it looked like a giant puffball. I thought, “If he’s barking at fungus I am gonna be pissed.” It wasn’t fungus. I could tell because fungus doesn’t fight back. It was a GIANT snapping turtle. The biggest one I had ever seen. Right there in the middle of the woods. Its tail was folded in, and it’s head was all pulled back in its shell, it was actually really cute, but Vader wouldn’t stop barking at it. I had to put him back on-leash and basically drag him away. Of course, by then we were a little lost so it took a while to get back to the car, but it all turned out ok.

Yesterday I completely disassembled and cleaned the horn. It wasn’t working so I wanted to be sure that it wasn’t full of gunk first, before I looked elsewhere for the problem. It’s a pretty neat device, and very cleverly made. It’s really interesting to look inside something that was made in the time before today’s methods of mass production. If someone decided to put the same style of horn on a production car today the whole thing would be disposable. The instructions I have for the maintenance and repair of the Model A horn include information on wrapping the copper wire coils and all manner of things that no one would ever do (or in some cases, know how to do) today.

The horn is one of those classic Ahhwooogaaah horns, and the way it works it pretty cool. (more…)