Glassware @ the Foundary

Tom has got a thing for glassware. Maybe you could call it a problem. When we registered for wedding gifts he spent an unusual, perhaps troubling, amount of time handling the glasses, fondling the tumblers. Now he works for a company that sells glassware, among other things, and he's pretty excited about it. One part of his company specializes in members-0nly short-term sales events.

Click the banner below and sign up to see some glassware Tom is really excited about. You'll receive regular emails from the Foundary with more great deals on glassware and all sorts of awesome things for the home. Thanks for your support. These are the people who pay for the diapers.


...still no news on the twins. Everything is good, but we're still waiting.

Road Tunes: Rafael Saadiq 100 Yard Dash

TEDx 2010: Omaha

TED Conferences are supposed to blow your mind. These conferences are purpose-built to spread ideas that redefine for us what is possible and remind us that finding solutions to human problems is a joyous enterprise. TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) Conferences work as inspiration catalysts for entrepreneurs, artists, scientists, educators, policy-makers, and just plain folks. They are awesome.

And -- because all things awesome either start out, pass through, or end up in Omaha -- we're going to have our very own TEDx Conference in October. TEDx Omaha will be held October 16th, 2010 at the Durham Museum.

TED events are organized around 18 minute talks and performances by innovative artists, thinkers, and doers. The most mind-blowing talk I've ever seen is this one, delivered by Ray Kurzweil.


More on TEDx Omaha: TEDx 2010: Omaha

If you are concerned that maybe you spend too much time on the Internet, spend some time on the TED site and learn about 8 million things you didn't know about our world: TED TALKS

Karine and Tom Buy Minivan, Win Big!!!

I mentioned in an earlier post that something funny happened after we bought our minivan in Omaha last week. This is the funny thing that happened.

We won $2,500!!!

We'll post of picture of our billboard when it goes up. Seriously.

Minivan Shopping in Arkansas

We looked at some sweet minivans yesterday. That's a sentence I thought I'd never write, a thought I thought for sure would never exist in my head. Well, times change. We are old, we are dorks, we will join the cavalry of minivans and, if we are lucky, we will drive them to Dairy Queen.

We didn't plan on needing a minivan. Maybe no one plans on needing a minivan. It's just something that happens to you.

We visited three dealerships, sat in a bunch of minivans, drove some other minivans, spent a surprising amount of time wondering whether or not a certain used minivan smelled like urine, talked numbers, and said no about eighty-five times. Then we went home without a minivan.

It's hard to buy something when it's really expensive and you don't want to buy it, but you sort of need to buy it. Here's what we want to buy:

2010 GMC Terrain. We talked to Todd at the GMC dealership and he was just the coolest salesguy we talked to all day. He was selling what we wanted to buy, and he was the guy we wanted to buy it from, except that what we wanted to buy was something that just doesn't work for a family of five with two infants and two-year-old. We found ourselves in the classic WANT versus NEED conflict. Which, I don't know about you, but me, I go with what I want like 85% of the time. But in this case....

We asked Todd if he could help us: of course he could! He showed us the GMC Acadia, which is only slightly less awesome than the crucially awesome GMC Terrain. You can definitely fit three car seats in an Acadia. Only problem is that you pretty much would have to squeeze them in sideways to access the third row seat. Maybe even rotate them upside down. Which, to some people, is like a deal-breaker.


Some unknown organ behind my sternum activated itself in sympathetic vibration when Todd fired up the 3.6 liter V6 on the moderately-pimped Acadia he was showing us.

With great personal sadness we walked away from the friendly and knowledgeable Todd and put our dreams of owning either of these finely-crafted machines in a small and sturdy box near our hearts.

We are still in the hunt. For a minivan.

John Vanderslice -- Promising Actress

I have my own little group of cherubs at school this year, which is why I have written like eight words on the blog since August. It's very different than working in the library. The kids sort of need stuff. All the time. It's okay with me. I like the excitement. But I do miss writing. I even bought a little tiny notebook a couple of months ago. The plan was I would carry it with me everywhere and write down little observations throughout the day. At the end of the day I would come home and load them into the blog. Even if it was only a sentence or two, I'd still be writing. The little notebook daily writing practice was executed exactly zero times. But I did buy the notebook.

Also, there is the boy. Time is sort of different now. In the best possible way.

I teach English and math to seventh and eighth graders. I also teach music appreciation whether they want it or not. I played this song for them Wednesday morning. It's a a great song. Here's what I told them when it was over and they looked at me with facial expressions ranging from mild interest to abject boredom to utter confusion: Don't worry kids if you don't like it, it's only because you don't know enough about music to tell what is good.

So that aspect of teaching is pretty fun.

Mirado Black Warrior Pencil

Permit me please to say a few words about the Mirado Black Warrior Pencil. It is a fine pencil. It is a pencil that I am 100 % proud to endorse. I’m not even a pencil person. Or I thought I wasn’t. I’ve always seen myself as more of a classic Bic round-shaft sort of guy. Everything changes. Maybe I’m just getting old. Maybe the transition from pen preference to pencil preference is like the transition from boxers to whitie-tighties. Maybe we long in our old age for the things that we had in our youth, except we want them plain instead of covered in pictures of Batman.

In any case this pencil bites and glides like a psychotic but strangely graceful Rottweiler on ice-skates. This Mirado Black Warrior has got me feeling feelings I haven’t felt in a long time. For a writing implement.

And the name. Mirado. What does that word feel like? Shouldn’t it be the name of a sleek, high-performance luxury coup? If I were a spy I would wind my Jaguar Mirado up foggy mountain switchbacks to the rendezvous location, a chateau. I would drive fast, wisp-trailed, through silent misted hairpins. Upon arrival would I exit the black Mirado with Karine and Ezekiel. Then something awesome and surprising would happen.

How is a pencil a warrior? Let me take a stab at it. Maybe when you use it to like obliterate the emptiness that is plain white paper free of words and doodles and stuff.

Mirado Black Warrior. This pencil is no joke.

More in-depth info (not kidding) at Pencil Grinders Weblog, and Pencil Revolution.

Stuff We Like: Miniature Statues

We got some sweet new knickknacks for Christmas. We love knickknacks. Here are some miniature statues of Albert Einstein and Louisa May Alcott. Aunt Betsy gave them to us. You can remove the heads and store tiny treasures in their neck cavities. Awesome!

Stuff We Like: Craig Drives South

Karine discovered the blog Craig Drives South last night while doing some research on Central American tourism. Its the story of a guy who drives from Seattle, Washington to San Jose, Costa Rica in a junky Subaru. He has some pretty hilarious adventures along the way. And he writes with style. Here he is describing a character he met crossing the Nicaraguan border into Costa Rica:

"A couple customs checks later I was reduced to one faithful, non English speaking guide that had the breath of a dragon. If he was within a 6 foot radius the compost pile which was his mouth would almost asphyxiate you. I tossed him a couple cordobas for some Chiclets and he returned to duty as fresh as a daisy."

He travels into Honduras briefly, but most of the blog describes adventures which occur in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. He traveled between February 13 and April 23 of 2008. Anyone interested in visiting Central America would benefit from a gander at Craig's blog.

Craig took the picture below near Santa Rosa National Park in Costa Rica. Its the first place that Karine and I visited in Central America, sometime in January of 2002.

Photo: Craig, Craig Drives South

Stuff We Like: Books

We like books. We like that they are portable and that they contain information. We also like them because we enjoy the different ways that authors use language to tell stories. We like the imaginative landscapes they create. We like that some of them are very old and they are as true today as they were hundreds of years ago.

Click the links to browse our favorite books. The links will live in our sidebar. Enjoy!

Delta, Delta, Delta, Can I help ya, help ya, help ya?

This woman works for Delta Airlines. She helped us get our bags checked for our flight to Honduras. While we were speaking with her we felt as if she actually cared about us. Thank you woman at the Delta ticket counter!

Circus World = Awesome

If you ever find yourself near Baraboo, Wisconsin, and we hope you do, make time for the Circus World Museum. Circuses are awesome. Its difficult to post right now because I am using a pre-WW II computer, but these pictures should speak for themselves.

Snacks

Got an email from a reader this morning:

Hey Karine and Tom! That movie looks awesome, but what did you guys have for snacks?

Great question. It wasn't easy to choose. Here's what we finally decided on:

Wall-E: Two Thumbs Up!

I love going to the movies with Karine. But it takes a lot of convincing to get her to go. She likes movies, but suffers from leg twitches and muscle spasms whenever we go to the theater. Its not a real serious medical condition. More like ants in the pants I think.

Wall-E is a great movie and we would recommend it to anyone who loves robots, robot love stories, fat people in outer space, spandex jumpsuits, or Fred Willard. It was a great story. My prediction: five Oscars.

My conservative hero Andrew Sullivan's take on the movie here.

Honduran Roadshow Volume #1: Tom's Knick-knacks

We brought an extraordinary amount of strange crap to Honduras. Due to my urishiol-induced, heat-aggravated cashew rash (see post) we spent most of last weekend indoors. How bored were we? We were so bored we decided to take pictures of some knick-knacks sitting on a bookcase. Karine interviewed me about these strange objects and this blog is the result. Next week I will be interviewing Karine about our kitchen appliances.

KL: What’s up with all these knick-knacks?
TL: I don't know. I guess they’re just the things you kind of hang on to. Wherever you move, there they are.

KL: What age did your obsession with knick-knacks begin?
I was very young. I suppose it started with stuffed animals. I had Rambo Teddy Bear -- a stuffed bear and Toby Steeringwheel -- a stuffed rabbit. Before that I had binky -- a binky.

KL: Which are your favorites?
TL: The cast iron train and my little tiny train (The Lionelville Express)

KL: Do you know where they came from?

TL: Yeah, I know where all my knick-knacks come from. The Lionelville Express was a gift from my best friend and my girlfriend. They ordered it off of tv. It was attached to a giant alarm clock and [the train] actually went around. The alarm clock is long gone. But I've hung on to the little train.

KL: Why trains?
TL: I’ve always liked trains. Um… trains are great. I don’t know if there’s a real short answer to my train obsession. Omaha, the U.S.A., my family, the Great Plains, taking pictures of trains. They’re cool machines.

KL: Is it important to you that you are the first owner of your knick-knacks?
TL: I’m only the first owner of one of my knick-knacks. My Lionelville Express train.

KL: Let’s talk about some of your other knick-knacks. What are these? (Reaching to touch a piece of paper sticking out of a Alice in Wonderland toothpick holder.)

TL: Don’t touch that! It’s my certificate of authenticity! It goes with Alice. And Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

KL: What are they?
TL: Tweedledee and Tweedledum and Alice. They belonged to my grandmother. She had a lot of knick-knacks. I’ve had these since college but never really looked at them until now. They're kind of scary. I don’t think I want them anymore.


KL: Tell me about the big wooden bird.
TL: It’s really ugly and it was also my grandmother’s.

KL: How about the leprechaun bobblehead?
TL: I got it from a party hosted by Casey Piersma.

KL: How do you feel about other bobbleheads?

TL: I hate all of them.

KL: Any other thoughts about your collections?
TL: I’m not planning on doing any more collecting. I never really meant to have this collection. Some things you just don’t get rid of.

Interview by Karine Lewandowski

Photography by Tom Lewandowski

Stuff We Like: The Trout

As far as musical tastes are concerned, ours don't always overlap 100%. Karine does not enjoy Lamb of God, my favorite heavy metal band. I like Karine's favorite artist, Bright Eyes, but I can only listen to him about once a month. There is simply no disagreement when it comes to the Trout. We love the Trout. We like to listen to the Trout in the morning, while sipping coffee and eating toast on the front porch. We know that any day that begins with the Trout is going to be a great day.

This legendary 1969 performance of the fourth movement features Daniel Barenboim, Zubin Mehta, Itzhak Perlman, Jacqueline Du Pre, and Pinchas Zuckerman. Cellist Jacqueline Du Pre was just 24 years old. Her instrument for this recording, the Davidov Stradivarius, was purchased for several million dollars by the Vuitton Foundation upon Du Pre's death in 1987. The cello is currently on loan to Yo-Yo Ma.

The Trout Quintet was written by Franz Schubert in 1819. Enjoy!

Stuff We Like Posts

Well, we are a we now. We've been a we for about seven months now and, as a celebration of our we-ness, we are going to be writing from time to time about stuff that we like. Don't worry, we'll still post pictures of dog hosing and cake baking. We might even post some funny juice tasting again.

There are strict rules for items posted with the heading "stuff we like." We both have to like it. This means that Karine can't write stuff we like posts about movies with lots of explosions and I can't write stuff we like posts about sitting on the porch and talking.

Stuff We Like: Ze Frank

We can say without hesitation that The Show with Ze Frank is the funniest and smartest thing that we have ever seen on the internet. His last new episode was published March 17, 2007. We haven't seen anything remotely like it since. The Show was hilarious interactive new media explosion -- difficult to describe but easy to love.

For example: He invited his viewers to dress up their vacuum cleaners in wacky outfits and posted the results on the show's website. Dressing vacuuming cleaners in wacky outfits? -- that's not cool. Oh, wait. No, its awesome. Check out the complete archive of wacky vacuum cleaner outfits here.

If you have three minutes to kill, treat yourself to one of his best episodes, located right here. If you have more time on your hands watch them all. You can start right here.