Falcon

My favorite bird has to be the Peregrine Falcon. They are deadly and they are also the fastest bird on the planet. On a dive, it can reach speeds of over 200mph. Well there is this tall building by my house that I keep seeing them circling overhead by:

I looked up falcons on the internet and found out that there is a nest box at the top of this building and that the falcons are looked after by a local group. Today was my first sighting of one not flying so I ran home and got the binoculars and took a pic of the bird through one of the lenses:

Hopefully I see it again, Ill try to get a better shot next time.

Cars and Coffee

Today kicked off the start of the car show season with the monthly Cars and Coffee event at the Auto Motorplex in Chanhassen. Despite the near freezing temperatures there were a TON of cars that came out. Nothing too exotic, more Porsches, Audis, BMWs and Corvettes then anything. There were THREE Audi R8s there and I have a feeling that they will be insanely common this summer so this will be my last posting of them unless I see one that is heavily modified:

R8 interior:

There were two lotuses there, one Elise and one Turbo Esprit that I have never seen before:


This show is the first saturday of every month.

Prince!

I had a little extra time today before a car show out in Chanhassen this morning so I decided to go check out the spot where famous musician Prince used to live. His recording studio is in Chanhassen right on highway 5. It is called Paisley Park and I dont think he records there anymore but this is where his career took off from. It is still a recording and movie studio and is heavily guarded and fortified. There are video cameras everywhere and gates and such.
Paisley Park:

The view from around the side (truck entrance):

His actual house that he used to own is down one more intersection on highway 5 and then north on a certain street. You cant see anything from the road besides the guardhouse but from satellite views, he had a HUGE mansion with many acres of property back there:

Hummer

As if there weren't enough hummer photos in my blog yet... this is one that was spotted in Eden Prairie. What is cool about this one though is there was a badge on the side that said "biodiesel", so I'm assuming it has a conversion for the engine to be more energy efficient... Either that or he didn't want the nutjob environmentalists torching his beast of a truck! Still, I will have one of these some day.

micro machines!

Ive kept a large number of my childhood toys since I was young, mainly military micro machines. About 5 or 6 years ago I started to try to finish my collection and get one of every vehicle out there that existed in the line. I only got halfway before bills and life got in the way and they all went into storage in a couple giant boxes... Recently I sold the majority of the collection on ebay for almost a grand! I did keep a few vehicles though and these are the ones that I actually have history with.... The ones that still have dirt on them from when me and my friends would actually play with them as kids. These are the sentimental ones that I will never get rid of for anything! (I will never fully grow up haha!)

new job!

so i got laid off of my job at medco health solutions because of the "economy" and all that... started a new temp job today at a place called Maritz research. They are a market research company and my job is the front desk receptionist. I am filling in for a lady who is on a long term medical leave of absence. this is the view i get all day...first, looking towards the front door:

second, looking to the left of that... there is a conference room behind those curtains and on the other side of that on the outside is centennial lakes (where i spent the majority of my childhood playing). pictures and personal stuff from the lady who regularly sits here have been blurred to protect them...

after the conference today they opened the curtains and i got a good look at the view from the third floor... the building to the right outside, i was actually on the roof of with some friends when they were under construction:

my three suns

took this back in december on one of the coldest days we had all year...

the illusion given off by the cee crystals in the atmosphere is little sun rainbows to either side of the sun, making it look like the sun has a halo around it... when its just rising in the morning it looks like there are 3 suns coming up...

gun!

it was brought to my attention the other day that there was not a picture of my rifle in the last few pages. i was actually asked if i had sold it. (i cried a little inside). my loves in life go family, girlfriend, car, guns. the AK is still doing fine (as is the Uzi) and i actually just put some new wood on it... if you remember, it came with some pretty shitty wood and i had replaced that some time ago but that was not proper wood and wasnt the original configuration that the romanians had it in when they used it in the late 70s. i found some good condition original romanain wood and put it on there and now the gun is totally decked out in a nice cherry redish - brown wood set! and yes, that wooden front vertical grip may be ugly to some but i have come to love it. it makes holding it so much better too!

scale lotus

wow. its been a WHILE since i posted here... winter is boring. nothing to take pictures of. but i found some stuff to keep your eyes happy...this is my small collection of mini lotus esprits...

that big yellow one is a rare remote control car from 1990 that is the same model and year as my actual car... found this on ebay after a year of looking around for it... paid a pretty penny too...the little orange one on the left beneath that is a custom job that i did.. it was originally yellow and had paint on it to look like an earlier version of the esprit from the 80s (not my model year) so i covered that up and redid the back windows with a file so it would more closely match my real car and added some custom rims and put it all back together...to the right of that is a slightly bigger esprit featuring the high-wing that was actually the next model to come out after mine in 1992. this little toy has a feature where if you pull it backwards, it winds up and you can release it and it will travel across your floor. this was a promo over in england...down in front is a little white micro machine esprit. this little thing is part of the reason i actually have the car i do today. this micro machine was bought when me and my friend dustin used to actually play with these things when we were kids. i got this in a pack of james bond cars and instantly fell in love with it. it was so angular looking and looked a lot like one of my other favorites, the lamborghini countach. I had known what an esprit was at the time but never really thought much about them, but this little micro machine inspired me to research them a little and appreciate them more. from then on, lotus was always on my mind as second only to lamborghini and a few years later all it took was seeing a few cruising down university avenue to really spark my interest and find out that i could actually afford one. the rest is history!

dream phone!

ladies and gentlemen, its that time of year again where I upgrade to the newest and best phone on the market!

This time I have switched over to AT&T in order to get their new HTC Fuze... This is a very similar phone to the old tmobile MDA that i was using in that they both use a windows mobile operating system and have a side slide-out qwerty keyboard... the main differences are that the new one has a VGA (640x480) resolution screen that makes everything look like a damn photograph (double the resolution of the iphone as well so take THAT apple!) it also has an internal processor that is more then double the speed of my old one as well as a 3.2 megapixel camera instead of the crappy 1.3 of my old one. It is a nice shiny glossy phone and has a flush touchscreen on the front and a diamond looking backside. it is a lot smaller then the old "bar of soap" sized thing i used to carry around too.here are comparison pics to the old brick monstrosity:

GAS

ITS BACK DOWN TO $1.99!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know i said i would post a pic of me dancing next to the sign but its too damn cold out!

irony

jenny craig, next to coldstone ice cream place. self explanitory.

animal wars

this is my moms dog staring up the tree at a red squirrel... they stared at eachother for about 2 minutes straight... just thought it was cute.

early satch

FINALLY! I found my first satriani concert ticket...dated from sunday, december 20th, 1992! over 15 years ago! I remember sitting on my dads shoulders in order to see the stage... he even brought me down to the front of the stage for a bit!

satch!

4th time seeing ledgendary guitarist Joe Satriani! this time he actually came to the same state I live in. This was october 7th at the state theater downtown minneapolis. quite possibly THE best concert I have ever been to in my life. The opening band was Mountain... 1970's guys who sing Mississippi Queen (its on guitar hero) and then Joe came out and rocked for a long time and did a mix of his old classics and some off of his recently released new album.

mountain:

Joe Satriani:

Joe talking to the audience:

Mountain and Joe jamming out at the end of the concert:

gas

first time in over a year that gas hes gone below $3.00 a gallon... ill post a picture of me dancing in celebration if it goes back under $2 ever.

diablo!

ANOTHER black diablo in the cities! (that makes 4 total, how bout some originality here people??)this is a mid 90s lamborghini diablo roadster vt that is at morries maserati getting an $11,000 clutch job done. i think i just threw away my dreams and hopes of ever practically owning one of these and attempting to keep up on maintenance while still affording food and a place to live.
this is not the same one that was at cars and coffee a few months ago...

fall!

its official, i hate the world.... er, i mean, fall is here! (followed very soon by muther f'ing SNOW GRRR!)anyways, this is the only neat thing about fall:

cars and coffee

here are some pictures from this months cars and coffee event. they moved location from last time out to the auto motorplex in chanhassen which i have posted about before. the motorplex is a lot of garages that people can buy to store their cars in and customize however they want. sort of like a condo for your car. here are some examples of some peoples finished condos:

There was a HUGE turnout of cars there today but here are some of my favorites:
4 wheel motorcycles:

lambo thats been at this show before:

delorean:

not necessarily my favorite, but this car is causing a HUGE stir in teh automotive world because of its performance. this is the Nissan GTR which i posted about in the last post from the world class driving event. you would BELIEVE the amount of people swarming the car at todays show. im surprised no one had a heart attack or peed their pants. this is like every riceboy street racer's wet dream.... i think its ugly.

and finally, the lotus crowd... first pic is mine, second pic is my friend Jay with the twin of my car...
esprits:

elise/exige:

thats all.. this is the last cars and coffe this year and probably the last car thing im doing with my car this year. (*tear*)