Yeah, I’m here and will be posting some stuff soon. The holidays were busy, and as such, I took some time away from both this site and my others. Look for some photos from our car-free transit trip to Austin over the holidays real soon now.

Stephanie’s gotten herself a new bike, and I thought I’d take the chance to show it off (along with mine). I’m still on my beloved, classic European city bike-inspired Breezer Uptown on the right, and now Stephanie has gotten herself a Haro Maude cruiser, shown on the left, customized with a front basket, bell, bottle holder, front brake, and LED head & tail lights. Now we can ride together and spend most of our time not needing a car at all anymore.

Meanwhile, here’s photos of the tree. In years past, I had a monster 12+ foot tall artificial tree, which was OK when I was in a loft with 14 foot ceilings. The bungalow couldn’t accommodate it, though, which is for the better anyway - that thing was an incredible pain to store and set up.

So now, I’ve gone retro. I’ve got an actual 1950s aluminum tree, outfitted with simple and unadorned silver and blue ornaments. I also got an actual 1950s light wheel to go with it, which a relative had in their attic, still in its original box with original price tags.

Arts Goggle, Near Southside, Fort Worth, TX, originally uploaded by Kevin Buchanan.

Took this photo a while back at the last Arts Goggle in the Near Southside, in front of the building that houses Spiral Diner, Lili’s Bistro, and Panther City Bicycles. Never did post it, so here it is.

Vegan Cupcakes - Spiral Diner, Fort Worth, TX, originally uploaded by Kevin Buchanan.

They looked tasty, but I did not partake. This time. Taken at Spiral Diner, the fantastic vegan restaurant on Magnolia Avenue in the Near Southside in Fort Worth, TX.

Don’t know what happened over at my50syear.blogspot.com but I’m a wee bit concerned. Marzipan - everything alright?

Bettie Page, 1923 - 2008

The single greatest pinup model of all time, the woman whose name became synonymous with the art itself, has passed away. Farewell, Bettie - the world would have been a lot less interesting without you.

My vintage aluminum Christmas tree with a chilly Fairmount day out the window. More pics of the vintage aluminum tree - and the vintage, fully operational light wheel - coming soon.

Haven’t had the chance to write individual posts for any of this, so here’s a comprehensive deal.

Over the last weekend, we walked a few blocks to Ryan Place (the historic neighborhood adjacent to the south to our own historic neighborhood, Fairmount) for their Candlelight Christmas home tour. This year’s tour was all on Elizabeth Boulevard, the row of swanky mansions in the middle of what is otherwise a more modestly-scaled urban district.

As a bonus, they were doing tours of the neighborhood’s grand Episcopalian church.

(If anybody is interested, I could do another post about the home tour, if anybody wants to see more photos.)

This wouldn’t be a personal blog without the occasional photo of myself. If Marzipan can do it, surely I can give it a try - even though, admittedly, the results here won’t be as pleasant as hers, I’m certain. Here’s the range of my attire - from several days ago:

To today, about the most casual look I ever wear:

I don’t drive much - usually, I prefer to take my bike, for everything from work to errands to eating out. It’s a Breezer Uptown, and I love it. I’m not a “biker” - I own no spandex, I rarely wear a helmet, and I sit upright. The Breezer’s not super lightweight - it’s got full fenders, a large rear rack, decently fat tires, an eight-speed internally geared hub, a bell, a fully-enclosed chain, full LED lighting system, a comfy saddle and suspension seat post…it’s very much in the vein of European city bikes, and it makes a great city bike/pleasure cruiser. It’s quite capable of getting up and moving if the need arises, though - for a fully-equipped bike like that, it can really fly. It can carry a lot - a good load of groceries, a fully-stocked laptop bag, etc. It’s a fantastic machine and I am really in love with the little black bike.

Tonight, I made food at home - something which I have been purposefully trying to get better at, and I think I am. I made some peanut pasta, with all-natural crunchy peanut butter, light Silk vanilla soy milk, about a tablespoon of soy sauce, and a little heat. As I was out of Tabasco, I had to break out the DOOM INGREDIENT - Dave’s Insanity Sauce, one of the world’s hottest hot sauces, a bottle of which I keep on hand but rarely use. Just a tiny drop of the Insanity Sauce in the whole batch of peanut sauce gave the thing a nice kick. (If anybody’s curious of how I came to know Dave’s Insanity Sauce and why hot foods never bother me anymore, let me know and I’ll share the tale.)

Doesn’t look too bad, does it? Considering that until very recently I could burn cold cereal, actually cooking my own meals is something of a revelation. I’m fairly confident that I even kept it vegan - it’s vegetarian at the very least.

If you’ve not stumbled into the pit of awesome that is the Prelinger Archives, you are really missing out. The Internet Archive has been digitizing Rick Prelinger’s astonishing collection of ephemeral films for a while now, and there are some wonderful things in it. Here’s a more thorough description from the Archive’s site:

Prelinger Archives was founded in 1983 by Rick Prelinger in New York City. Over the next twenty years, it grew into a collection of over 60,000 “ephemeral” (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. In 2002, the film collection was acquired by the Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. Prelinger Archives remains in existence, holding approximately 4,000 titles on videotape and a smaller collection of film materials acquired subsequent to the Library of Congress transaction. Its goal remains to collect, preserve, and facilitate access to films of historic significance that haven’t been collected elsewhere. Included are films produced by and for many hundreds of important US corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions. Getty Images represents the collection for stock footage sale, and over 2,000 key titles (soon to be 2,500) are available here. As a whole, the collection currently contains over 10% of the total production of ephemeral films between 1927 and 1987, and it may be the most complete and varied collection in existence of films from these poorly preserved genres.

As a taste, let me introduce you to the just downright terriblewonderful “Young Man’s Fancy” from 1952. At first glance, it’s about a teenage girl’s efforts to woo her brother’s college friend when the pair come home to visit, but in reality it’s actually a film encouraging families to consume as much electricity as possible by buying all sorts of cutting-edge electric appliances, like refrigerators and blenders. It is a remarkably weird piece of ephemeral filmmaking.

(In two parts.)

I wrote this as a comment on My 50s Year, but figured it could do well enough as its own blog post:

I have a pretty basic cell phone, but I really don’t like it. I don’t like being that connected and I don’t like when people call and I feel obligated to answer it right away. By association, it also irks me when other people I’m talking to take a cell phone call in the middle of our conversation. When did that become accepted, anyway? It just makes it seem like our conversation is not as important as whatever that random person wants to say. When did western civilization develop this Pavlovian urge to drop anything and everything just to answer the stinkin’ cell phone?

Let me get one thing out of the way: for whatever reason, I didn’t get any photos of food. You’ll just have to take my word for it that it was all quite tasty. I did, however, manage to get lots of photos of the various animals encountered at the two main Thanksgiving locales - my mom’s horse ranch in Granbury, and Steph’s parents’ place in east Fort Worth.

One of the ranch’s Pembroke Welsh Corgis - this is Koko, adopted from a Corgi rescue place up north.

This is Zeldie, I believe.

If the above one is the one I think it is, this would be Pressie.

Koko again.

And again.

And once more.

This is Farley, who doesn’t like having his photo taken.

And now, for something different, here are some horse photos.

The paint was very friendly.

She kept motioning for us to come over whenever we got too far away.

She also enjoyed posing for photos.

Back to the Corgis - this is Lucy, who also doesn’t like having her photo taken.

The two shy ones together.

One more of Lucy.

Koko REALLY loves to play tug-of-war with her rope toy. That little dog is surprisingly strong.

Later, at Steph’s parents’ place, this is Mojo.