Company!

In a few hours, John and I will be picking up my friend, Lisa, from the airport. A few weeks back, she sent me a text message that round-trip flights from Phoenix were dirt cheap and she wanted to visit. Now with a clean apartment and everything sparkling, I find myself pacing back and forth with what to do until we leave.


Lisa and I met in 2003 when I first visited Columbus, OH. She has since broken up with her then boyfriend and moved to a warm climate, as have I, but we've never lost touch with one another.

I'm thrilled that she wants to visit and that for the first time I will get to show-off my new home in a few awesome-possum ways:

1. The 2009 Waikiki SPAM JAM! where our street will be closes yet again for another parade, stuff to see at the park near the zoo, and I really really really want to get my hands on some SPAM pot-holders. I mean, if you're going to have pot-holders, they might as well look ridiculous. Want to see awesome - check out the amazing stuff (3-legged pig!!) in the SPAM SHOP.

2. Bridget's Sexiest Beaches. You know that Playboy broad, Bridget. The one that's kinda chubby and hit-with-the-not-so-hot-stick? She's been dampering the beaches of the world with her presence for a few weeks now via The Travel Channel, and tonight she is going to ruin where I live by frolicking around in a grass skirt (betcha!) hula-ing her way onto my block. UGH. Still, I've been sending text messages around advertising since so many people are insistent on me showing them photos of where I live. Here, watch this hussy and save your pennies to visit yourself. Between you and me, I think John will cry.. the website says that she's going to surf Pipeline (hi, surfing mecca!) and he'll never want to touch the North Shore waters again. Yikes.

3. Finally! going to hike the trail at Diamond Head sans tour guide (aka, John Himself). Lisa loves hiking and I'd much rather have to climb over sticks, rocks, and roots than to use the stair-machine at the gym. :) More than likely, I'll try to get us lost on purpose but I'll need John's help with figuring out how to scare the shit out of her, granted she hasn't RSS'ed this blog and reads it prior to the hike.

4. I will not be the only heavily tattooed chick with freckles walking around Waikiki. I mean, look at these things...

(more pics here)

Birthday Cards

I turned 28 last month. The latter half of the "Quarter Century Club." Don't have a career. Still "in college" but without a degree. What could I do with English Literature anyway? (besides wrote teen novels about vampires, but that's already been done) Have crows feet. Have fat. Have found myself saying "when I was younger..." a lot. Less cards this year, but was more thankful than usual to get them. Especially from my childhood bestest friend, Heather. (and how I wish I could hang out with her for a few days again these days).

My nephew turned three. THREE. He's a little person now, and I loved spending time with him. Making him grow and learn. I'm always trying to think of cool things for him (like giving him the book Where the Wild Things Are for Christmas and two stuffed dudes to go with it). For his birthday, I sent him a green ukulele and Hawaii-style buttons for his favorite shoes, his Crocs. I also drew him this:

Man, I miss that little shit.

A Little Late

Last summer, I headed out to Columbus, OH to hang out with a bunch of broads that I know from the internet. We all claim to be models, right. The handful of us took over a loft-style hotel (at $250 a night, no less) and posted up with photographers to take a bunch of pictures of ourselves. In addition to all the vanity, we actually had a CAUSE behind it. We got together to put together care-packages of sorts to send to US Troops that are stationed overseas. We sent a bajillion autographed photos, posters, playing cards (my dad has a deck!) with nudie cartoons on them, etc. It was a neat weekend, to say the least.

Turns out (7 months later) that some of the girls put a calendar together, and I was thrown in as the January-chick.

If you're really interested, you can purcahse one of these calendars HERE.

Hello, My Name is Simon

...and I like to do DRAWL-ings!
I've been meaning to upload new things that I've tinkered around with drawing (yes, all are hanging on the fridge). Having no scanner, nor printer - I might add - I'm stuck with taking photos of the paper and then have to adjust the light so that the paper doesn't look yellow.

I drew this lighthouse for John. Back when I was just visiting Hawaii, we had gone hiking at Makapu'u Point and spent a day frolicking in tide pools at the base of the mountain right on the coast. Waves crashed all around us as we swam, climbed, and sat on a blowhole - and on the side of the mountain was a little lighthouse. I loved that day and sat at the beach doodling in notebook, but then came to making an appointment at Tattoolicious to get the lighthouse tattooed on me - but really it was for John, as all around it I had text read "You are the light that shines." Months down the line, we're in Hawaii together, and he wants to get the same lighthouse tattooed on HIM, but bigger + badder + deffer. This is what I came up with:

Then he asked that I draw him a fish in a bowl. It took me a while to figure out the hard part - what KIND of fish (originally, a black moor would have been my go-to, but using pencil wouldn't give the guppy much definition) - so I went with a freaked out dude in a spilling bowl:

Then John's brother, Anthony, asked that I draw him theatre masks. You know, the happy + sad faces? But instead, I put a Hawaiian twist on them and for the first time drew without using reference pictures and created special tiki-guys for Anth. These ones were angry + stoned. I hope that if/when Anth comes to visit us, he gets them tattooed on his feet. As a matter of fact, I like these guys so much that I'd love to go balls out, purcahse some acrylic paints, a canvas, and make a painting of them.

For Valentine's Day, I sucked and didn't get John a card but opted to draw him something special. I took a photo from back in September of us in our "cartoon outfits" and stuck our caricatures into a heart shape. My first cartoons of people I knew! Here's a few pics of that so you can see how close I tried to duplicate + exaggerate us: