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Say hello to Louie, the pooch Melissa and I adopted from a local canine rescue. Louie’s a energetic little guy who’s been through a lot. From what we know, he appears to be part beagle, part pug dachshund ( a”puggle doxle”) and is about 1.5 years old. He came into Chicago Animal Control as a stray, and folks seem to think he was hit by a car. Chicago Canine Rescue saved the lil’ guy, paid for hip surgery, and put him into a foster home. After some training, he was listed on Petfinder.com where Melissa instantly fell in love. He is settling in nicely.

Melissa surprised me for my birthday with a commissioned painting of my family’s dear pet bird Gordie (previously).

The talented artist responsible for this is our friend Sergio Quiñones, who has an Etsy shop full of his original work. His attention to detail and ability to conjure emotion and character in his paintings is masterful.

Sergio is also a big fan of Rufus, and surprised Melissa and I with this painting of the little guy.

Thank you so much, Melissa and Sergio. These are fantastic pieces of art.

Rufus lost his battle with lymphoma this morning. Words cannot begin to express how much Melissa and I miss him now.

To everyone that was a friend of Rufus, everyone who watched him for a weekend, let him lick your face, or found all 60 pounds of him suddenly sitting in your lap, thank you for helping give him a wonderful life.

Goodbye, little guy. We miss you, we love you.

More.

Mediterranean

Melissa and I recently returned from a 9 day jaunt through Spain, with stops in Barcelona, Seville, and Tarragona.

Jamón

Stone wall, Barcelona

Grape vines, Penedès

Cathedral, Seville

Contemplating Calçots

Altar at Sagrada Familia

Barcelona from the air

See all photos here.

While helping Melissa shoot some photos for her Etsy shop, this happy accident occurred. Silly art directors, always getting in the way of things.

Action shot of Juan’s wonderful entry to the 2010 DIY Gift Exchange. This handmade graph paper notebook is the shizz. His nascent blog ain’t too bad, either. Check it out.

Stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. Since Melissa and I started living together, we’ve struggled to merge our respective collections of stuff, those little trinkets and knick-knacks that seemed so cool at first, but then just sit on a little shelf or cupboard and collect dust. We’ve done an all right job so far, but there’s always more to be done.

One day, while studiously avoiding real work clicking through Apartment Therapy, I ran across a neat post on a blog called the Brick House. It detailed their DIY shelving unit project, and I was hooked.

In our apartment there was a very large, very empty wall.

And now it is no longer empty:

A few trips to Home Depot, a lot of 1/2″ pipes, fittings, wood stain, and spray paint later we had a nice set of shelves on the wall. It’s rock solid and hasn’t fallen down, yet. That is my humble measure of success.

It was immensely fun for me to work on this project. I tweeted while in-progress that there’s something really enjoyable about building an actual physical structure. I spend so many hours every day tapping away at a keyboard building digital things that getting covered in pipe grease and stinking of paint thinner and sawdust is a welcome respite.

Santa was nice to me this Christmas and brought a new set of power tools. I haven’t the faintest idea what I’ll do with a reciprocating saw living in a rental, but I’ll be pleasantly surprised when I finally figure it out.

But most importantly, now there’s a new home for all of our stuff.

Seven years ago Mogos and I took a long trip through Virginia and the surrounding environs. As we slowly inched north, we spent a night in a nondescript campground in Kentucky (painfully) named Twin Knobs. We pulled in late at night, and desperate for a place to crash, picked the first empty site we found, shoved some money in the donation box, and passed out. We woke the next morning to find, much to our delight, that we were married that night.

Swoon.

Last year, in September of 2009, I traveled to Saint Petersburg, Russia to work with the fine folks at the State Hermitage Museum. I had the good fortune to spend 8 days in Petersburg. While not cooped up in a conference room in the museum, I spent my free time exploring the city. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip. You can see the whole set over at Flickr.