so my little sister will stop cursing at me thru facebook...

i had the great fortune of going to new york twice in one week, here are some pictures of the big apple...

times square...

also, times square...

yep, even stromtroppers go to NY for vacation... actually they were promoting the new star wars movie...

home of Cood Morning America... i totally watch them...

one of the many beautiful Cathedrals in NY...

part of Rockefeller Plaza...

"welcome to good burger. home of the good burger. can i take your order?"

- that's for you Nourtney

the MoMA

muesum of modren art...

Rosenquist, i'm a fan...

Van Gogh, yeah, he's pretty good...

Warhol, obivously...
Warhol...

Picasso, i'm not his biggest fan, but i do like his color palette...

Picasso...

Pollock, up close and personal...

Jasper Johns, i'm also a fan...

Matisse, i LOVE his colors...

Monet, this is only one canvas of Water Lillies, it's amazing... i wish i owned it...

these are a few of my favorite things...

my (current) favorite pair of shoes... purchased in south africa at Mr. Price, for real, that's the name of the store...

my new "toy", yep, a nintendo DS, nice...

in south africa i told kathryn that i wanted a bag that said, "i heart samwise", so i made one myself...

i wear this shirt almost every other day, yeah, i'm a geek...


i LOVE this soundtrack, i really liked the movie too, but the soundtrack is awesome! i'm listening to it right now...

a freshly made bed; it just doesn't happen everyday...

Coffee snob?

Sn-offee
or
cob?....

so, for those of you who don’t know: I’m working part-time at a local coffee and tea café. It’s a nice place. We have really good coffee and like 100 different kinds of tea. We have a lot of faithful costumers that are really nice. And now we two locations. – I kind of sound like a commercial… anyhoo, today a guy and his daughter came in and his daughter had Dunkin’ Donuts. DUNKIN’ freakin’ DONUTS! Now, I think I have the right to be offended that they brought stuff from another coffee place into ‘my’ coffee place. But my first thought was, “how could they drink Dunkin’?” What?? Should I care that they bought Dunkin’ instead of coffee from us? People have different taste buds. Maybe they saw Dunkin’ first. Sometimes it’s easier to go to someplace familiar. Yeah, maybe they were from out-of-town. Maybe they have a tight budget (gas is like $4.40 a gallon). Our coffee is a little pricer than Dunkin’ but that’s because it’s really good coffee (and GREAT service). – there I go again… anyhoo, who am I to judge?

But just don’t bring other coffee into ‘my’ coffee place… it’s weird.

finally, a new post...

Yeah, so i'm sorry that I haven't posted anything in a month. I guess i was rebeling from posting every week in South Africa. :-) well, i'm back and i hope to post more than once a month! So, without further ado:


i thought i should post some of my paintings from the last month. It's not very much but you can see a theme. I have always loved movie posters (and the actually movies too). I like how the artists try to capture the theme/idea/premise of the movie on one single piece of paper. It's amazing to me, some more than others. Some of my favorite posters are the very simple ones, such as these from Saul Bass (a personal favorite of mine):

So, i used Bass as my inspiration for a few movie posters of my own design... it was fun...

These next two don't quite fit in the movie poster catagory but you can still see simplicity and emphasis on shapes...

last post from South Africa...

Hi everyone, i had a great blog and some great pictures to post for my last blog from S.A. BUT, i didn't upload it to my flash drive. So, it's still on my laptop at the house. bummer. Well, i leave on Wednesday and arrive at JFK on Thursday. An 18 hour flight all by myself. I'll be sleeping a lot. :-) Please continue to check my blog as i will be letting you know what i will be doing for the rest of the year. (Plus i'll post pictures of new paintings) Thank you all for your prayers and support!

sorry, no pictures... just read...

Monday.
Sometime after 9 am.
I had just gotten back from community worship and prayer. It happens every Monday. All the YWAM staff and students show up. This week was a little different. We didn’t have a speaker; it was a week for outreach prep. Which meant the outreach team would be on their own schedule. So, right after prayer and worship, most people went either back to their homes or to the office. I went back to the house. I had only been there a few minutes and I turned around to head back out the front door when I saw something that I didn’t know how to handle. A long, gray SNAKE sliding it’s way into OUR HOUSE! It just kept coming and coming. (It was a little shorter than arm’s length.) I was completely stunned. I just kept saying, ‘There’s a snake coming into our house. It’s in our house. The snake came into our house.’ I didn’t know what to do next. Lynn came closer and so did Heidi but still we just kind of stood there. Thank God that our maid was there. Nomsa had been outside and must have seen the snake heading for our door because she was not that far behind it. Her English isn’t that great but she was telling us to get back. But she was also handing me the broom. Now I had seen one of the guys kill another snake that was on our property and that snake was fast! So, was Nomsa wanting me to kill this snake with a broom? WHAT? But I didn’t even have time to ask her because as soon as I grab the broom she started whacking the snake with the mop! WHACK! She hit it about 7 times before it looked like she finally killed it. Then she picked it up with the mop handle and carried it off, probably to the edge of the property. Crazy! Later that day she showed me that she had killed another snake heading for the front door, it was a lot smaller than the other one. But that’s 2 snakes in 1 day trying to come into our house. We had been told that since the weather is cooling off that they would go into hibernation. Right.

Now as shocking as that whole experience was, the biggest shock didn’t come until Thursday. Another family that live on our same property (and they’re on staff), came to our house and showed me a picture of a snake that they got off the internet. They were asking me if it was the snake that came into the house. I told them that I didn’t get a good look at its face and they should ask Nomsa. Which they did and she said that it was the same kind of snake. A black mumba. The second most deadly snake in the world. In our house. A black mumba bite can kill you in 20 minutes. There is an anti-venom, and thank goodness there’s a clinic on our road (about 10 mins away) that has some. Can you believe it? A black mumba was it our house. I totally believe that God was watching over us. Black mumba’s are usually VERY fast but because it was in the morning and it was still pretty cool outside, it was moving slow enough to kill. Plus we think it was a baby since it was only arm’s length and they can grow to 7 feet. Crazy!