I keep coming across pictures of some pretty striking forms of transportation. Here are the three that made the strongest impression:
A crazy adaptation of an old green truck into a raft for cuban refugees – the barrels provide buoyancy and supposedly they’ve rigged it so the truck motor is powering a propeller.
In Pakistan they evidently love decorating tour vehicles with the most outlandishly ornate decorations conceivable. Apparently it started out with just a flourish here and there and then people started trying to outdo one another. This is the result:
And finally in Japan they have what are called ‘Decorata’ – trucks covered in chrome, neon lights, and anything else shiny and flashy they can find. Apparently this truck-decorating trend really took off after a 1970’s movie featuring a costumed truck driver who drove one of these crazy rigs all over Japan. These totally remind me of the Transformers movie.
(added 4/8/08):
I just found another example of a great crazy vehicle. A farmer in China made this amphibious vehicle, it’s the same basic idea as those ride the ducks tour boat/trucks but a nice cozy size for family outings:
Apparently I have a thing for integrating bookshelves in creative places. (Remember the Bibliochaise?) I really love this staircase that was designed for an apartment in London (or flat, I suppose). You can read all about it and see a few more photos here.
An excellent new way for kids to play with their food.
I think the bulldozer to help get food onto your spoon or fork is pretty brilliant. Once again, I may need to get these for my niece.
(I saw these on a coworker’s blog, but don’t want to give away one of my favorite sources. You can find out more about the fun eating utensils here.)
In preparation for Valentine’s day, here are some fun candy heart spin-offs available to help you really go all out, whether in favor of or against the general idea of the holiday.
For serious Valentine enthusiasts, you can express that enthusiasm with Sweethearts Candy Cologne. When giving away little boxes of candy hearts just isn’t enough, take it a step further and smell like them too.
If, on the other hand, you’re feeling more like a Valentine’s grinch, the thing for you might be Bittersweets- cute little candy hearts, minus the happy little messages of affection and love. Instead, there are 3 collections, Dejected, Dysfunctional, and Dumped, with 37 unique sayings each of sadness, aloneness and despair. The good news is the candies are still tasty and they come in cute little reusable tins.
Of course if you really want something extraordinary for Valentine’s Day, I suggest you try this.
I found these awesome stuffed toys and I really want to get some for my 16 month old Niece. They come in sets, ranging from common maladies (Bad Breath, Kissing Disease, Athlete’s Foot, etc.) to Calamaties like Black Death, Flesh Eating Bacteria and Mad Cow Disease. My Sister says that my Niece already has more than enough stuffed animals (and she’s right), but these are so much cooler than just stuffed animals!
My favorites are E Coli and Salmonella:
If you want to see all of the collections, the site is, of course, giantmicrobes.com.
(maybe I can just get my Niece the Liquid Soap Dispenser…)
So a friend of mine recommended that I try Zappos to find some boots that will fit my larger-than-average-size calves. In case you are not already familiar, they are an online store with a huge selection of shoes and other accessories, and a brilliant policy of shipping all purchases for free with overnight delivery, plus free return shipping if the shoes don’t work out. After approximately 1 hour of browsing their site, I am giddy from falling in love with so many pairs of shoes. I’ve narrowed it down to these eight which I desperately need to own:
(get a closer look at the shoes)
I’ve already ordered one of the pairs of black boots (which was the objective of this whole thing, after all) and I’ve also signed up to receive an e-mail when the brown ones are available in my size. And while I realize that four of the pairs of shoes I have picked out look incredibly similar and couldn’t possibly each fill a truly unique niche in my life, I still believe that I need them all. And you just can’t argue with red patent leather peep-toe mary jane pumps, now can you?
A brilliant way to combine my love of books and my love of well-designed furniture. It’s also fun to play with all the different finish & upholstry color combinations on the designer’s website.
(I think I would go with magenta and dark brown. 
)
Filed under: Athletic, Dancing, Design, Entertainment, Food, Music, Neat Stuff, Random, Travel
So I’m starting up a blog and I think it’s going to be about a lot of very random stuff. So just to get things started, I’m throwing together a quick sampler of the types of entries you might encounter as my blog continues….
Travel – I figure most trips I take will be worthy of at least a little blip in my blog, but I’ll try to keep things light, focusing mainly on the highlights. For instance, if I were to recap the visits to Iowa that I took last October, it might look something like this:
Had to go to Iowa for work over and over again. The first trip was slightly novel, but even that wore off pretty quickly. I have decided that I hate Northwest Airlines (cranky personnel, evil seating system that makes you sit in the back of the plane unless you join their little club, and no entertainment whatsoever on board. Grrr, I hate them). Almost no food in Iowa is really worth mentioning, but our hotel somehow managed to have this amazing chocolate cake with a molten center that comes with Haagen-Dazs ice cream, a big pile of whipped cream, and a small tureen of hot fudge. That cake may have been the highlight of the entire series of trips. The business stuff was okay, although it got a little repetitive by the fourth trip, and the real climax was on trip number three when Northwest sent my luggage to the wrong airport under someone else’s name. By the end of that week I was so frazzled that I almost burst into tears when I went to my local wireless store and found out that they no longer carry chargers for my cell phone (which was needed to replace the one still lost in my luggage, of course). And for some reason being in Iowa made me want to drink Coke all the time, which I almost never drink at home. It was a bizarre time…
Athletic Stuff – I tend to be always working toward some type of athletic something-or-other, so odds are it will come up from time to time. As for specific events you might hear about this year, I’m hoping to run the Vancouver Half Marathon in early may, I’m signed up for the Ragnar Northwest Passage Relay in July, and also for Cascade Bicycle Club’s RSVP in August. And I really hope I manage to squeeze in a triathlon this summer too.
Dancing – I don’t know how often this will come up, but I am in a swing dance performance troupe, so there’s bound to be an announcement or something whenever we have performances (expect to see us at Folklife in May!). Plus I might occasionally be inclined to rave about a particularly excellent night out dancing, like two weeks ago when a friend from the troupe persuaded me to go dancing at the Highliner, a gritty little dive bar at the fisherman’s terminal. I got to dance with super great dancers (including of course Mike, the troupe guy, who is a blast to dance with), and I had this one amazing dance with a random guy I had never danced with before named Steve, who I think may have been my dancing soul mate. It was awesome.
(if you’re curious about my troupe, it’s the Savoy Swing Club Performance Troupe)
Neat Stuff – One of the hazards of being a designer is finding really cool stuff that you really really want to have and then discovering how ridiculously expensive it is. A good example of this is the Selk Bag. It’s a sleeping bag with arms and legs and a big hood, so you can get up and frolic in the middle of the night without giving up the happy cozy warmth of your bedding, plus you get to look like a giant teddy bear. While recognizing that the practicality of this item is nearly nonexistent, I seriously want one. I actually think the cost may have come down since I first discovered this brilliant product, so don’t be shocked if you see a giant teddy bear-ish figure frolicking in the middle of the night.
Music - Every once in a while I get pretty excited about some new song I’ve discovered or an awesome playlist I’ve just put together. I expect this enthusiasm will eventually spill over onto my blog.
Entertainment – Sometimes there are just entertaining things in the world which simply must be shared. For instance, I found this video on the blog of a boy I like and it made me like him even more:
(there might be a lot of copying fun things from other people in this category)
Food – I get pretty excited about really good food (or drinks), especially ice cream. In this category you might see raves about super delicious things I’ve discovered lately (like Margaret’s homeade apricot pistachio ice cream last night, where the apricot flavor permeated the ice cream in a truly amazing way) or rants about food gone wrong, like how it seems nearly every restaurant makes chocolate milkshakes with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup and it’s just wrong. Vanilla has no place in a chocolate milkshake and in my opinion the only way to properly make a chocolate milkshake is from chocolate ice cream (I personally choose Ultra Chocolate, made by Double Rainbow and sold at Trader Joes)
Random – I’m sure other nonsense will find its way into my blog as well, like updates on my exciting effort to knit a scarf and testing out the ‘world’s best paper airplane’ according to the dangerous book for boys.
Stay tuned!
