Honeymoon update 2. We're back home.

Some updated stats:
- weeks married - a few
- states travelled through - a bunch
- kilometers travelled - a lot (5000+ I think...)
- calories eaten - a disgusting amount
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I had good intentions to keep people updated on here as we went along, however driving for a number of hours each day can be really tiring, and by the end of each day I really didn't want to do much except plan the next day and then go to bed.

Now I'm already back to work, and everything already seems far gone. Once I go through all the photos and get them up online, I'll re-cap it all for you. Suffice to say, it was an amazing trip. We made it all the way down to Savannah (which is an amazingly beautiful city and which I'm already itching to return to) and back. We went zip-lining, and rode roller-coasters (which I've long had a fear of); we swam in the ocean, and we hiked up a mountain; we looked at old houses, and stayed in a modern cabin (Lost River Modern, it's amazing); we spent time around thousands of tourists, and we spent time completely by ourselves. It was all over the map, literally and figuratively, and I'm so happy we went and did it.
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Speaking of work, I forgot to share some more work I've done for Marc at the Princess Cafe recently.

While we were gone Marc had a crazy busy weekend. One part of it was having the 2nd Princess Cafe Comedy Night. I worked the poster into my busy pre-pre-wedding schedule, and am pretty pleased with it. I think Jenna suggested the vaudeville hook when I was working on the last Comedy Night poster, and I'm happy I decided to try it out for this one. Now I have to figure out what the microphone is going to do for the next one!

That same night, Marc also launched his new late-night grilled cheese stand called Cheeses Murphy. I crammed this work into my even busier pre-wedding schedule, and worked on edits on the road because I wanted to work on this project with him so badly. I'm mostly happy with how it turned out, but am glad he wants to make some changes to what's on the menu, because it gives me some more time to make a few changes to how the menu looks.

Since I don't really do illustrations Branko Vranic drew up Cheeses himself for Marc, and I set to work trying to put some things together that did the image justice. Luckily, Lost Type just released Oil Can not that long ago, and as soon as I saw where Branko had gone, I knew it would work perfectly (and I had been dying to use it!). Actually, every typeface used on the Cheeses work is from Lost Type. They are releasing some pretty great stuff over there.

Cheeses Murphy basically redresses the Princess Twin lobby for Marc to sell sandwiches out of, so he had me design up some big posters, as well as standard smaller menus, to give the place its look. After Jenna and I got home on Saturday night, we popped over there to check it out and I was really excited to see everything printed and up.

Oh, and the food is good too! Marc was working on his bacon jam recipe while we were gone, and it's pretty awesome. The Lumberjack is a great one too, hearty. Looks like there'll be some late-night snacking in my future, as I still have to try the rest of them!

Honeymoon update 1.

Stats:

- weeks married - 1

- states travelled through - 5

- kilometers travelled - 1063

- calories eaten - too many

We left KW yesterday afternoon, with our new bumper 'sticker' (thanks for making it a magnet Celene!! Also, thanks for making it!) proudly displayed on the back of our car. 600km's and more time than it probably should have taken (mostly bad Ontario traffic), we stopped near Scranton, PA. This morning we got up and continued on to Philadelphia for the afternoon.

Pennsylvania, and most of New York state, have been surprisingly treed and pretty. I'm actually sad that we passed through most of NY in the dark, as there seemed to be endless tree covered hills, and every small town downtown we passed through looked like it was post-card perfect (I love a good small-town downtown).

Philadelphia itself seemed pretty cool. Obviously we went to Love park, and then found some oversized game pieces that made me pretty happy.

We did a pretty rush job of the whole thing. I ate a cheesesteak at Pat's King of Steaks, we hit up some local crafter stores (Art Star and Nice Things... Handmade), then Honey's Sit 'n' Eat, where Jenna had an amazing quesadilla, and I had what basically amounted to another cheesesteak. Thanks to Design*Sponge and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives respectively for highlighting those spots. Glad we made it to them.

After dinner made a quick stop by the liberty bell (felt we shouldn't miss it, not unlike the cheesesteak) then we powered on past Baltimore and into Arlington, Virginia. We're real close to all the big stuff in Washington DC right now. That's what's on tap for tomorrow. The main monuments, the Smithsonian, and I guess the White House too.

So far I am loving our new GPS. I still doubt it takes us on the smartest routes sometimes, but it's tonnes better than our old one. Also loving our new car stereo deck. Plugging the ipod in is so much better than trying to tune new FM stations to play it through all the time.

Up to this point I've been 'live tweeting' our honeymoon (much to Jenna's displeasure), so if you want to know what we're up to each day, check out @bearfacejohnson.

Can't wait to share photos of the wedding, and the process of getting everything ready for it. Look for that sometime after the honeymoon. And then maybe after Stitch 'n' Kitsch even...

purge

So if everything goes as planned, and all my work gets done, we're leaving on a mini road trip tour of Ontario this weekend. Can't wait. I can definitely use the break right about now.

The picture above comes from this pretty great site here. Here's three more pretty awesome map covers.
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So, as I've mentioned, I've had a number of tabs open waiting to be posted. Time to finally clear them out.
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This may be my favourite Lunch Bag Art post yet. Clever funny, and a nice nod to the shark. Good one.
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I can't believe I haven't linked to this yet: Barack Obama is Tired of Your Motherfucking Shit. Amazing. Kind of makes me want to listen to some books on tape. David Sedaris kind of makes me want to do that too. (I was reading him today and thinking about how much I love to hear him read.)
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Plaid duct tape. Great idea. I kind of need this.
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The smallest bank in America. Down home, honest people keeping other people's money in check the old fashioned way. Impressed.
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New additions to the Penguin great ideas series on the Book Cover Archive. We own a couple of these from when the series first came out. Great idea. Little books, great graphic design. This one is, not surprisingly, one I kind of want to own. Definitely a favourite. I'm pretty into this and this too, both for the fact that they are Orwell, and the fact that they are classic Penguin styles. Really seems to suit Orwell.
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I am loving this old S.O.S ad. The lettering, the illustration, the baby bear, all of it. (via BoxVox)
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Jenna sent me this link to this pretty great salt & pepper shaker set. Love it. It was sold by the time I saw it though. Jenna said it was overpriced, but it still would have been tempting...
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While I've known about the Alamo Drafthouse for awhile, I've never seen all of these posters they've had done. This Ferris Bueler one is pretty amazing. Thanks to Jennifer G. for sending that to me.

Listening to the CBC the other morning they were talking to the a county official about the idea of shrinking Flint Michigan. Sounds like a really interesting idea. It also sounds like Flint might be a place I want to visit before they do that, just to see all the abandoned houses. I've been mildly interested in the idea of abandoned houses/buildings/neighbourhoods for awhile now, but have never really checked any out. A couple summers ago I wanted to go looking for Ontario ghost towns (there are many), but then I found out that they weren't so much abandoned towns as just towns that are gone.

Speaking of abandoned houses and Michigan, this post here about Feral houses in Detroit has been making the rounds lately. Crazy, interesting stuff.

The idea of a road trip to Michigan has been discussed before, to check out the nice things highlighted in their amazing ad campaign, but I'd say if we went, I'd definitely want to make a stop to look at all of the decay along the way.
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A quick poke around Sweet Juniper! (where the Feral houses post comes from) reveals many other fascinating examples of Detroit decay. Here's a quickly cobbled sampling:
A street where 60 of 66 homes are abandoned
An abandoned Zoo
An abandoned school (this one is especially good/bad as I was in awe at everything left behind, including student psych records, of students still in the system, with social security numbers listed. That's just not right, but would be interesting/terrifying to see/read)
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As you may know, I am pretty excited about spectacle when it comes to my movie going experience (either that, or the most accurate reflection of how I feel life is, like Away We Go, which was amazing by the way). As such, the movies I have seen in the theatre most recently tend to be 3D (My Bloody Valentine, Coraline, Up) or IMAX (Watchmen).

Possibly breaking new ground to this end is XGames 3D. It could quite possibly be terrible, and totally not worth it. And, of course, there's the corporate aspect to the whole thing. But seriously, "extreme" sports in 3D? I definitely hope I'll get the chance to see this.
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Here's a movie I'm going to have to see. (finally something design related in my blog!)
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This is weird.