Here’s some art I made for a shirt art contest.

I googled “tentacles” in Google image search to get ideas.  Then I immediately modified my search query to “tentacles -porn.”  Oh Internet, don’t ever change.

My rental backyard currently looks like this:

The photo doesn’t show it’s biggest problem – a serious drainage issue that makes walking to that gate nigh-impossible and prompted me to christen the house “SWAMPHOUSE” during the rental process.  The good: income from mud wrestling tournaments.  The bad: best place in town for hot, sexy mosquitos to get it on.

Before the summer has ended (or likely, as the summer ends), I’d much rather it look like this:

It should also feature this:

Tessellating Paving Stone.  Yes.

Tomorrow I paint walls.  This may be getting out of hand.

So I’m thinking about renting this house, which has lots of things our current residence does not – for example:

Trees!  Concrete instead of dirt!  Sunlight!

Grass!  Fences!  Heat that (probably) works!  A backyard instead of a wall o’ dirt!

A dishwasher!  Cabinets!  A countertop!  Some realtor’s purse!  Windows in the kitchen!

A basement!  Fireplace! (or a.k.a.) Alternate heat source if (when) the heat stops working!

And get this, internet … it’s got windows in it!

All this plus lots! of other stuff! that our current house doesn’t!

!!!!

My office doesn’t have a window, and I didn’t have a way to see if it was raining outside.  Should I get my umbrella?  Have I been here so long that the sun has set?  There wasn’t any way to know, really.  I work at a college, and they have a weather webcam mounted on the roof of one of the (few) buildings on campus.  I discovered the webcam after a few weeks of going downstairs, seeing rain, going back upstairs, getting my umbrella, etc.  *Begin Mac commercial*  I took a clip of the webcam with Safari, and put it on my Dashboard, so now I look out the window by pushing a button on my keyboard. /mac commercial

So now, to see what’s going on outside, I just look at my desktop.

Yes, I am aware of how overwhelmingly sad and computer-slave that is.  In fact, I lied.  My office does have a window.  It looks into yet another person’s office.  That’s not creepy at all.

Some time later I added a webcam of the Huntington Beach Pier to my ever-growing collection of Dashboard apps.  This brings me to my point (finally).

Every time I check the dashboard for notes I’ve made, to use the calculator, or to look up a word, I see:

Where I am

and

Where I want to be

Commercial time again:  The pier webcam is from HB Cams, and I’m using Slothcam to serve it to my Dashboard.