Jeanne if you're ever in...

Just a quick one from the parking lot of the Motel 6 in Portland. I actually paid to use the internet today, then the network for the hotel never showed up in my list. Thank you VIP Auto. The really annoying thing about all of this was that last night was the first night I really needed the internet, because I had ads to make and send in that I said I would do.
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Great day yesterday. The disc golf course was beautiful. The diner was also beautiful. The drive was not too long, and we ended the day with Target and Chili's.
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Today = downtown Portland, and a fall coastal cruise. Oh, and my first Denny's breakfast! Exciting.

More Days

So i knew this trying to blog every day thing wasn't going to work out so well. Part of the problem is my planning: too much going, not enough resting. Today was another 357km, making our 4 day total 1655.
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More bad weather. Yesterday and today. Rain mostly held off for the corn maze (which was super cornfusing, and took us 2.5 hours) and Ben & Jerry's (kind of a lame tour, overall), but our back roads drive from dinner at Alburritos in Littleton, to our hotel in Twin Mountains was rain soaked and had me feeling like a dead body, crazy hitch hiker, or scary ghost guy was going to pop out and the next thing you knew we'd be in the episode of Supernatural we were headed home to watch. Out Motel was suitably Bates-ey, which didn't entirely calm the nerves when the ride was over either.
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More bad weather today meant what would have been a beautiful ride in the world's first cog railway, was mostly a view of clouds, and track-side debris. I still loved riding in a steam train though, so there was definitely that. Still a cool thing, just not as nice as it could have been.

After that it was lunch in our first diner of the trip, The Littleton Diner (with our second, the A-1, as seen on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, to come tomorrow), and a visit to the world's longest candy counter, and we were on our way away from Mt. Washington.
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Rather than do the smart thing, and just drive the three hours here to Augusta, we drove one hour to Funspot (awesome), spent two hours there (super awesome), and then drove 4 hours to here.
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We took a ton more pictures today, but now, thanks to that diversion, I am too tired, and we need to catch up on some tv too. Oh, and sleep too! Right! How is it 1am again already!? Tomorrow shoud be Disc Golf, A-1, Gardiner ME, and then Portland. Should be a little less crazy, but with my shins and calves still feeling the maze from yesterday, we'll see how things go.
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We're up to 231 pictures now. I just have to find some time to organize and upload. Some real gems from Funspot, and some nice stuff from elsewhere too. One from the Cog up above. I'll let you know when (if) I get them up on Flickr.

Day 1

I have to say, the eastern part of New York state is a lot nicer to drive through than the part I'm used to (Buffalo, are you surprised it's nicer?). The weather today was shit, so that picture up above isn't mine, but we did pass that place just before we hit Vermont. I stole the pic from someone on flickr, and you can see other pics of it (the whole buidling is totally awesome) if you go here. Oh, did I mention that's a dry cleaners?
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So yeah, the weather today was, as I mentioned, shit. Which meant that as we were going up and down what I believe were the Appalachian mountains, where we should have gotten some awesome views, all we got were clouds. But actually, they were awesome in their own way, clinging to the trees, and hanging real low.
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The day started in Syracuse at the Motel 6, moved on to the Bearatorium, a gift/candy shop in East Arlington Vermont where I bought a Maple Syrup Soda, and saw a Giant chocolate teddy bear.

From East Arlington, which is in the south east part of Vermont, we checked out some outlets, and then booked it north east to Woodstock, VT where everything was closed. It was a real nice down town, but I guess everything closed at 5 and we got there at 5:20.We did find an adorable place called Woodstock Coffee and Tea where I got a real tasty "Café Mexico" which kept me going.

The day is ending now, at a Best Western in South Burlington VT, nearly 600kms of driving after the day started.

It seems my trip odometer only goes to 1000kms, 'cause now it's just at 8.4... I guess I'll have to re-set it everyday and then add it all up later, because of course I want to know how far we go.
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Tomorrow is Ben and Jerry's, and then, hopefully, the Great Vermont Corn Maze, weather permitting. Should be a lot less time driving, which will be nice, 'cause right now I'm spent.
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Oh, and I need to find a full set of all of the icons they have on the signage for tourism info here in Vermont. They're super nice! The road signs themselves are black, with nice, clear (okay, not all of the time, a few of them confuse me) iconography that lets you know what which category the location your being directed to fits into. I'll try to show you soon.
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Hopefully there'll be pictures to come. We should take more once it's nice out. I think right now we have maybe 5... Not sure if we have internet tomorrow or not. I hope we do! My google reader is at 68, and I don't think I can get through any of it right now!

Just a Quickie

We leave after work today on our way to visit New England. Exciting. And, yes, that is fictional Connecticut up there (Stars Hollow from The Gilmore Girls), but you know, whatever. I question how much the two of us would actually want to visit that area if it wasn't for that show. Stay posted for updates from the road.
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And, in case you've never seen it, this is my favourite commercial right now. So uplifting. And Stephen Hawking? Yes. I love that you know it's actually his computer saying it. He would actually show up at Simpsons table reads when he was appearing on that show. It would be so easy to fake it, but no, he just goes in and does it. awesome.

The pic above is for my mom, if she stops by. Yet another grab from the Canadian Design Resource. Are you seeing now why it should be one of your daily reads too? Apparently I've already gotten at least one person hooked, a good feeling for sure.

I love this postcard for the fact that it would have been sent out blank, in order for the sellers to add their own place name to the card. A ridiculous idea, but efficient, and one of those older practices that I have a real spot in my heart for.
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The Pelican Collection. Tonnes of materials, real nice to see. Makes me wonder if there's something similar for Penguin paperbacks. Gotta love 'em. (via Draplin)
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If I was going to buy another laptop anytime soon, and for some reason it wasn't going to be a Mac, it'd be this one right here. It's a thing of beauty for sure, and trying to make the world better at the same time.
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Pretty much every year at Christmas I make a joke about buying someone inappropriate a flask. This is really because I have always wanted a flask. I am pretty sure that I would rarely, if ever, use one, which is why I never buy myself one, but the comment is always rooted in the fact that if someone ever bought me one for Christmas, that would be pretty great. This one here is pretty ideal. Not the traditional flask shape I love, but at the same time, I love this one for it's shape, you know (and finish, of course).
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This may be my longest awaited Criterion Collection dvd. I remember renting this as a new release when I was hunting through the Rogers video store near my house, and saw only one copy of it on the shelf. Pretty standard practice for me at the time. Renting all of my movies at a big movie store, I always looked for things they only bought one copy of, always more up my alley than the big blockbusters. Not that I haven't watched it again since then, but I've never bought it because I knew they eventually had to put this one out, so that at least the first 4 Anderson movies could be a matched set, even if his current contract means following ones won't be (from what I hear at least...
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Recently, Meet Your Printmaker featured a local artist, which was quite surprising! Seems like a real nice guy, who, thankfully, seems to do real nice work. Looking forward to maybe seeing him at the zine fair.
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Just a couple more days until we leave...

This here book reminds me of a nice little timewaster we once made up called the "nipple/phallus game." Basically, stuck with some friends with some time to waste, the goal is to look around your surroundings and point out things that either look like a nipple or a phallus. When it comes right down to it, you can argue that many many things in this world can look like one or the other. This book seems to embody that idea pretty well.
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Definitely keeping an eye on this little gem on ebay. The shape reminds me a lot of my favourite stapler, the Swingline Cub. Definitely looks like just a knock off, but as I love that shape, I'm not arguing! Oh, and I LOVE that packaging! Definite selling point there. Hope it doesn't go for too much!

I wish this hadn't gone for so much, woulda been nice to pick up for sure. Combining my love of staplers (the Swingline Tot, so cute! With a mention of the Cub too!) with my love of letterpress (and halftones...). Awesome! But too much for my blood right now...
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I've been pretty into illustrated alphabet sets lately, and this here is a beautiful set of vintage matchbooks that come together as a set. It's a little weird if you think about, since illustrated alphabets are typically kid-related, and matchbooks are typically very not kid-related, but you know, whatever. You can't argue with nice design. I especially love the fact that they're in Spanish, so instead of 'T for Turtle' you get 'G for Galapago.' Would love to see more shots, closeups of each would be nice, but just getting to see them is pretty great. Not surprisingly, I love the Owl (or Buho, if I'm reading correctly.) Thanks GrainEdit!
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On a personal note: I finally made a header for this blog! I hope you like it!
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On a much too personal note: frustrated with my seemingly endless sinus issues, I've decided to try out "nasal lavage." It's weird, but I'm pretty happy with it so far, and excited to see if it makes things better in the long run.

No, I am not in Montreal, but you have to admit that that's a pretty amazing postcard. I really don't know what to say about it first. Okay, how about the question of who exactly wants to send or receive a post card that highlights an airport? 'Look, I'm here! But this is as far as I've gotten...' It's not like the building's are even interesting, like at LAX or something; looks like just a big sprawling building and a parking lot.

At the same time, from my personal vantage point, look at that sprawling building and parking lot! And the cars! Just the idea of making a postcard of that image is pretty awesome to me, you know? And the layout? Well! 'How should we arrange this text?' 'Let's just slap a white box over the sky and put the text in that!' 'That's a great idea!' It sure was, but if you ask me, I can only see that being the case in retrospect, looking back from now. At the time, really? (from the Canadian Design Resource)
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This is a great idea. Now if anyone says 'I'll just have anything,' they can really have it! Or whatever too!
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Here's something that's been making the blog rounds like wildfire: Font or Typeface? Good little read, and a good addition to the personal knowledge base too. I'm always happy to have newer and clearer definitions of things. I was never really too sure of what the difference was before, and now I know.
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Seems like every couple of weeks or so it's someone's turn to mention the FedEx logo and it's 'hidden' secrets. Now it's my turn. Seriously, have you ever noticed it before, the beauty of the FedEx logo. I didn't until someone pointed it out to me, as I feel the need to do every time I see it. Check it out, and read an interview with the designer here.
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Trips getting real close. 9 days. Super excited. Can't wait to take a break and see a thing or two. I'm a little nervous about a thing or two, but we'll deal with those when we get to them. Get ready for this thing to turn into a trip blog. I'll be hoping to post most nights from the road, hotel web access, time, and tiredness permitting.

Go out the window, we all go out the window

So it looks like my hopes of keeping this thing as nearly daily as possible have been shot through with some kind of large bullet. Or maybe it's with eating tacos and drinking on Tuesday AND Monday this week, lots of work, and my allergies laying into me hard core.

Highlights of this week include the aforementioned tacos and the aforementioned work, but only 'cause some of the work was on Monday where I spent the day working for the Starlight from home, and got a small taste of what it would be like to get to do that everyday, as I would like to. Lowlight: Allergies. Mad frustrating.
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The image above is, of course, another beauty from Shorpy. The glow surrounding the building just takes me aback. So ethereal for lack of a better term. If you're not checking out Shorpy on a regular basis, what are you doing? Always makes me wish I could time travel (not like it's the only thing that does though...)
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On another Shorpy note, I notified the fine folks over at the Ampersand blog about a Shorpy image with some fine ampersands on some old signs, and it got up on their site. Go check it out.
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Draplin linked to this one referencing his hatred of graffiti. I'm linking to it referencing my love of graffiti. I think it's applicable to both. It's also just straight up awesome. Clever. Conscious. Crafty. Clean!
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This here is a great little video (c/o House Industries) about the stupidity of english spelling. I'd never heard of Ed Rondthaler before this, and I'm glad I have now. According to wikipedia he's now 103 years young and still going. He was a paltry 102 when they filmed that video. Definitely someone I need to learn some more about.
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And finally: a movie about Facebook? Whaaaa? (via Jeffrey Rowland, who is a comic (writing) genius)

Here's an awesome series of pictures about crate digging, and the reasons not to do it, fittingly called Crate Digging, Don't Do It. There's a nice intro to it, that explains what crate digging is in case you don't know. The lettering is particularly nice in each one, and I'm really just digging the overall style too.

My form of crate digging is more digging through stacks of last season's shoes, looking for great deals, but you know, I think I understand.
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Jenna sent me a link to a great looking little book for kids written by Ann Rand, and illustrated by her husband, designer Paul Rand, called Sparkle and Spin: a Book About Words. It shouldn't surprise you to hear that I want it. Examples of great design being used in products for kids keep popping onto my radar recently. Specifically, I LOVE the Charley Harper ABC's board book, 123 board book, and blocks. I bet you can guess what friends of mine will be getting when they have kids! While buying copies of everything for myself too, of course (actually, maybe two for when I actually have kids...)
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Looking at Paul Rand stuff got me thinking about Saul Bass, who, of course, is another design god. Being a former film student, I obviously knew a thing or two about his movie title work (you know, aside from his movie poster work) but it never occurred to me that he pioneered the idea of making interesting opening titles. Crazy. Check out this video to see the man himself talk about some of his big title sequences. Of course, you'll get to see some sequences too if you don't know what I'm talking about.
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All Known Metal Bands. Interesting, funny, and maybe informative? (I've never actually flipped through the book, just stumbled upon the title...) Beautiful cover though. Not surprisingly for McSweeney's though, of course.
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Great Flickr set here: anthropomorphic cannibalism. Definitely something I love seeing in a sign, all brought together in one nice little set.

The tabs I have open...

6 of 11 nights' stays are now booked. This trip is actually going to happen! Just nabbed a reservation at Sleepytown today, which Jenna found in tourism guide and we figured we had to go to based on name alone. Tomorrow I have to call Seven Dwarfs Motel & Lodge, and see about locking that down. Those are the two most ridiculous seeming planned hotels on the list. The rest are all mostly Super8's or Motel 6's. I kind of wanted to try to track down all kinds of independent/quirky places, but the chains just seem like they'd probably be a little more consistent. Not that I expect them all to be good, but just that I expect them to not be as bad as some of the others could be, you know?
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Chocolate covered bacon. Seems like genius to me.
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Cruise ship shopping center.
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Wood cars.
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1960 Heathkit Catalog. Beautiful (via Draplin.)
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Sorry for the terseness, that was just a little overview of some tabs I had open to show you, but it's getting late, and my back's been hurting all day, so I just took some muscle relaxants and am ready to relax.