Brandon Reid

This is Brandon Reid, He makes fine music. follow the link and listen/buy is music.

I met him about 3 years ago in Alaska. He is a wild man, a traveller a poet and a good cook!

He also is responsible for my stick poke tattoos and teaching me how to cook asparagus. He was the highlight new years eve 2010.

Good guy.

stories from the side of the road (#1)

So.  There's something Christina and I, and a few others secretly really love. Twice a year, every suberb around us has their designated large item trash pick up from the city council.  You can put out items like televisions, old fridges, couches, tables, lamps, etc. Being the economical, thrifty, not wanting to consume more than what we need people we are, we've found these weekends are great for getting furniture items we need for our houses and rooms.  

It looks like this:  Around 10pm on a Sunday night, we head out to the designated area, drive around and look at the tree lawns.  Items I'm specifically looking for right now are:  a t.v. stand, a set of drawers for the end of my bed, and more chairs for our kitchen table.  Items we've found in the past are:  my kitchen table, a really cool bedside cabinet, tents, a christmas tree, and more.

Anyways, we drive around, check things out and bring home what works.  We look crazy (example:  Jesse was sitting on the hood of Christina's car wearing a head lamp), but we find some great stuff!  

Here are a few photos of our recent finds.

vintage suitcases!  Anyone getting married soon?  these would be great in your engagement photos.  why the wombat?  i was looking for practical furniture items.  Christina was looking for anything animal themed. You'll see...

 

along with the animals, there were pots EVERYWHERE.  we settled on one that wasn't giant and that looked a little bit Mexican.

 

like i said, more animals.  This is for Christina's door. 

 
This butterfly....what can i say about this butterfly.  It lights up and sings an asian techno song.  Score. And another animal for Christina.

an illustrated dictionary (it only goes A-K...that's a bit of a problem) and there was a box FULL of cassette tapes!  I started to love Cat Stevens because someone gave me a cassette tape of him and then I spent a lot of time in a car with no c.d. or MP3 player.  So this time we grabbed the Beatles 1's and Cole Porter. 

 

cleaning a set of drawers that I found that are pretty useful.  Everyone walked by and said 'it looks like...' and then said things like 'siding', 'window shades', 'bee hive'.  side note:  holy heck our building looks ghetto. 

a sampling of our stuff!

ok. let's be honest. we picked up a lot of crap. but we had a lot of fun doing it and so far everything we've picked up is being used.  The dinosaur and wombat and vintage suitcases decorate Christina's room.  I use the set of drawers.  We listen to the cassettes while driving. The butterfly...ok. i don't know how that is being used. It's just weird.  but it's made a lot of people smile so it's been useful that way.

look out for next weeks treasures!

 

mary.

This is mary.  She is a student on one of the schools we run called a'Discipleship Training School'.  Hers in particular is called a Compassion DTS. 

Mary has a pretty great collection of tattoos and we figured she had some stories for them, so me and Christina took a few photos and asked some questions.
 

Mary is from Michigan and is 20 years old.

The first tattoo we'll talk about is this one behind her ear.  It's the first two letters of the word 'Christ' in latin.  At one point, it was used by Catholics to identify their faith.

This tattoo is the one that caught our eye the most.  It's colorful and the artwork is bright and fun.  The story of this one starts with a boy.  A little while ago, Mary was dating someone. This someone turned out to not be the right guy for her.  When they broke up, God spoke to her about how she was made for a life of adventure, and the guy she just broke up with was not adventurous.  She got this tattoo as a symbol of the adventurous life she's going to live with God.  Considering she's living in Australia right now, headed to Latvia and Russia to do prostitute ministry, and is passionate about reaching the hard core music scene, I'd say she's living a pretty interesting, adventurous life. 

This is a close up of her adventure tattoo.

She has a storm cloud on the back of one ankle and a sun on the back of her other. This is to signify praising God through the good times and the bad.  

 

This tattoo commemerates her love of her home state, Michigan.  She says many people in her church have this one.  She loves her state a lot.  I've noticed a lot of people from Michigan do.

You can also the anchor that is behind her other ear.  It's a symbol of hope, which pairs with the symbol for Christ behind her other ear.  So hope in Christ.

This tattoo is her favorite.  She loves what is says, the script, how simple it is, and how you can usually see it. 

This one is a work in progress.  She started out with the outline of a heart, and then later filled in the color.  It was supposed to say 'We only have one heart' but before she went to get the color filled in, she had a dream that it was meant to say 'This is only the beginning'. So that's what she got.  Again, considering the adventure that is starting in her life, this is pretty true.  

She has a few other tattoos planned, but she's not sure when she'll get them done.  She has a friend who tattoos, and she wants to get them done by her. 


Thanks so much Mary for letting us take a look at your artwork and for telling us your stories!

Pray the devil back to hell

ALOHA

I just watched this incredible documentary.

 

I highly recommend it, its powerful as. I give a little more detail here and there is the trailer. i figure to stop me writing reviews and showing a ton of youtube videos this summer i made a little other section titled the summer review 

r.i.p.f.b.

as a part of my 'no consuming november' 

I deactivated my facebook. 

I will return to facebook, or I may not.

(this is a big deal)

facebook doesnt take you on adventures like this one, does it!

is your life missing something?

is your life missing something?

maybe its dogs in slow motion, 

enjoy.

summer 2011

Coming Soon

A post about how much I long for summer with every ounce of my being.

And a small list of things I hope for those 3 months.

A glimpse of last summer.

I went to the North Island of New Zealand. (This may still have been spring,  hmm)

To spend a precious amount of time with this incredible woman!

And spent boxing day with these doves.
friends are like the best.

confessions

I have a 2000 word essay due on monday. 

Its 3:13 am and i have just spent the last hour and a half reading internet comics and searching for pictures of smiling dogs.

after each successful find, laugh out loud and giddy happy feeling, i have told myself.. 

"only one more"

this has repeatedly failed.

I suspect that this is because the joy and happiness comics and smiling dogs bring trumps the tedious brain numbing feeling of writing a paper.

de canard, it is french for duck.

The day I am able to understand this, will be a magnificent day

Hawaiian Polariods

Once I lived in th Hawaii and drank coffee under banyan trees

                                                                                                                            

 

 played a lot of board games

But we spent a lot of time in the beautiful outdoors aswell

This was my default best friend. he wasnt bad.

This was one of my room mates, she truly was my joy

there were simple amusements and easy laughs

including basement shannigans that went on into the early morn

                       

we stopped in quiet places to hear His voice and proclaim our love

                                                    

we made the most amazing friends and were introduced to cultures and personalities that we never knew existed and we are better people for it. and by we are, I meant... I am

2010 was the most enjoyable year of my life so far.

share.

‎

"If I'm not sharing my faith, maybe I need to first ask myself if I have any."

(stolen from a friends facebook status)

Kez Dawg.

why i am friends with her? she is sweet, smart, creative a little crazy and has a wonderful sense of adventure

She is easy to be around, easy to open up to,  she is deep and wants all the goodness of God.

She is fun, I dont necessarily have to be in a mood to hang with her.. she is always up for easy going fun, unplanned adventures and lots of laughs! coffee, books, art, music.. goodness

Her friendship is amazing, She is so loyal, So committed, She has so much grace and forgiveness for even the jerkiest of people, she gives with out the need to receive. she is soft to others and cares furiously for the justice, hope and happiness of other...
i love her and i love her friendship.

She contributes to this blog occasionally as well. 

welcome to my next 6 weeks.

the 10th of October.

Rose at the public garden, i used to borrow the dying flowers to decorate my room. i must start doing that again, 86 the aphids though

I went to the Darby street fair and picked up these goodies.roasted almonds, chocolate from the new chocolate shop on darby and a really awesome postcard. that i've sent to someone great

I took a lot of photos that day. and the clouds were the main feature of them all.

listen. to listener.

Ive probably put this band on here before but I am honest to goodness obsessed. 

to feel. p.s this video may be violent. (it is violent)

Tonight i took a 3 hour nap between 6pm and 9pm. not the brightest idea.

I begun homework and was easily led astray by the big world wide web. 

I found this vimeo channel titled "california is a place". The story telling through some of these films is incredible. but what really caught my attention was this beautiful video below. here is the vimeo link

the lengths we go to, to feel. 

the things we need to do to be vulnerable.

the way we connect.

the way we overcome fear. 

for some reason I knew what they were talking about. 

I think about how many people walk around a shell of themselves. sick with fear like that one guy said.

~

we've locked ourselves up. for the sake of convenience, for security, for rusting materials and in fear of man and fear of failure..

I once was given a choice to stand on a chair and scream at the top of my lungs, I said no. now I wish I said yes. next time I will say yes. 

cause one day I don't want to have to break faces to feel my heart beat.

although I wouldn't mind breaking some plates at present.

mine, mine, mine, MINE

if you feed seagulls out your car window expect to be trapped in your car for about 20 minutes.

THEY WERE ALL OVER MY CAR.

THEY SURROUNDED ME  AND WOULDN'T LET ME REVERSE.. I OBVIOUSLY GAVE OFF THE WHOLE 'I LIKE ANIMALS' FEEL.

Musicians

It doesnt even matter what instrument you play. musician always look cool. These guys were rehearsing for the wedding ceremony. they played home by edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros. it was brilliant.

simple.

The other day I made a ridiculous proposition, the reply I got was 

"its so simple.. that its complicated"

its true.. it was.. I was being blatantly obvious about something that everyone thought there was more to it.

there wasnt.

The last few days I havent been able to get that comment out of my head. cause how often do I approach the simplest of ideals and complicate them to no end in my brain. 

When the truth has been clearly stated. 

"Its so simple.. that its complicated"

my theology(complicated) talks about truth(simple) how can I reconcile this.

Monopoly.

this is where i knew i had a good thing going.

this is where they made me cash in half of my $100s because there were not any left.

wally thought it would be a good idea to turn his money in to $1 notes so his wad would be as big as mine.

i started off with just railways and oranges... and then this is how i finished.

good games boys, good

So I recently found out that i have been playing monopoly wrong my whole life... but its ok. because i still won.