anybody else from New England who watched TV in the 80s and 90s have the theme song from Whalom Park immediately pop into their heads when they saw the name of this shirt?

not sure if this is the original or not

the stock chart pages, by size, now have the stock bar back... Yay!

I love the extra temptation to buy, because the stock is low... it adds an element of risk and excitement to shopping here.

Yeah, I'm bored

points of note:

1) I got mystery street team points yesterday. Thanks, whoever you are
2) My gallery photo for You Sank My Battleship is now in the product shots. WOOT. kinda wish I'd adjusted the contrast and levels, now.

round two of the backlog of gallery photos will probably happen tomorrow afternoon, will I get lucky again? We shall see.


I sorta already know what you all will answer, but I thought I'd throw out this question, anyway:

I am planning to move to Chicago sometime soon, maybe even as soon as this winter. Should I apply for a part-time Threadless position? I'd be happier doing the kind of work I do now (Facilitating Team-Building and Ropes Course programs), but I'm just beginning to make those kinds of contacts out there, and that work sort of dies in the winter... would it be wrong to apply to Threadless as a fallback? It seems sort of like I'm dissing threadless that way. Maybe they want some seasonal-type help?

Ponkie and I were window shopping in Sausalito yesterday and we went into a cute little shop with a bunch of novelty-type stuff... including these adorable little things called ugly dolls, which I really wanted, but were too expensive. Anyway... we had a total t-shirt geek moment when we saw a shelf full of familiar t-shirts and could easily name the sites they all came from. There were a handful of Threadless tees, a popular shirt with an AT-AT on it, an "Exploded" something and some humorous star wars designs... etc. I can't remember the name of the place, now. We didn't buy anything... no receipt.

Me and my favoritest person ever, ponkie, are going to San Francisco in a couple weeks. We are all booked with flights and hotel near the airport and cheap little rental car for possible day trips and we are very excited. We are also both West Coast/San Francisco virgins, per se, and have been soliciting our friends for for suggestions on what to visit in and around the area. We've gotten some great suggestions and I have a couple friends in the area to lean on for help, but we figure, the more ideas, the better. So what do you guys say? Who's been there? What shouldn't we miss?

I marked a shirt "I'd buy it" and I'm not gonna...
unless it gets reprinted on another color.

Why would I do that? Well, I spent all my time hanging out in the suburbs with Ponkie. We played mini-golf... wait, no, adventure golf, watched movies (at theaters, at home and at a drive-in), played video games (wario ware, mario kart double dash), went to the zoo, ate good food both out and at her place and just generally enjoyed each others company so much that we totally skipped going downtown. Am I a bad threadless addict? I had two pending orders, think I could've picked them up and gotten a shipping refund? So many other what ifs roll around in my head about the threadless visit that wasn't... what other wondrous things might've happened if I visited?

So I received two mysterious sets of street team points in the past couple days (and one set from ponkie), so Thank You, Thank You, Thank You...

I've been furiously taking pictures and submitting gallery photos... I'm up to $12 and have three photos pending. So possible completely free shirt if I can pick something I want sometime tomorrow... it's gotta be in stock in guys 2X... I suppose I should list the ones I own that I don't have picture of up yet.

Ambition Killed the Cat, Undercover Pirate, Rock HOW-TO, Blueprint, Geology, Unicorns Eat Children, Prehistoric Freak, Fahrenheit 451.

I'm considering Moby was a Consumer. Any better suggestions?

can't seem to post a "product blog" about this one. I just wanted to let Bob know that there's a They Might Be Giants song (Older) with this exact theme, so he doesn't really have to write a new song about it if he doesn't want to.

A few years ago, I was back at the first camp I worked at, running some ropes course stuff for a weekend rental. It was a big family picnic and seemed like a mix of fairly decent family-types and neanderthal idiots, as all the weekend rentals are. I had all my ropes gear with me, a few harnesses and carabiners and such... all stuffed into my big beautiful bag. This bag was a custom-designed bag from Timbuk2; a giant messenger bag, with a nice padded back made from a semi-waterproof waxed canvas material, a leather "boot" around the bottom and all sorts of extra pockets including a padded compartment made for laptops. It seemed to be indestructible and almost bottomless. And while I was carrying a ladder and half of the equipment down the hill to the storage shed, it was stolen, with all my equipment in it.

That was tragic, mostly because of the bag, and not the gear. Timbuk2 had stopped making that model of bag, earlier that year. I could no longer get a back with the padded laptop compartment, or the leather boot around the bottom, or even of that exact size. But I managed to find someone on eBay selling a few of them. They were ugly colors and Ballistic Nylon instead of Waxed Canvas and didn't have the boot option or the extra zippered flat file pocket... but they were the right size, so I bought one.

That bag was decorated with sharpies by my campers almost immediately... I didn't mind, I figured it'd make it less likely to be stolen with drawings of rats and beavers on it. I also wrote my name and phone number on the inside of it, with a super permanent industrial sharpie. I was back in business with a big ugly bag. I used this bag for everything for quite a while. I always carried it around camp during the summer days. On trips, I could fit my laptop, two or three days worth of clothes and cleanliness essentials as well as all of my camera gear in it. When I worked out at the ropes course, I could fit a full day's worth of team building props and toys into it... and Ropes is in full swing right now, so that's the way that bag has been, lately, full of props and supplies for a day of team building.

Unfortunately, the building we use to store our participants lunches and bags, and to eat our own lunches, and for bathrooms, is not ours alone. It becomes the camp office in the summertime. This past weekend, an overzealous employee decided that the camp office needed to be cleaned out and proceeded to throw out everything that was in it, including my bag full of gear. Irreplaceable props, that I've used in my team building curriculum for years are now in a dumpster somewhere, probably still in my big orange bag. My big orange bag with the drawings done by my campers and my NAME INSIDE OF IT ... is at the bottom of a dumpster somewhere.

When the YMCA says that they instill respect into all of their programs, they apparently don't mean respect for other employees, departments or the property of those employees or departments. I feel utterly violated, and bagless.

______________________________________________


UPDATE:
Y got me a gift certificate. I ordered a bag. It came today.

It's nice... though quite inferior to my last bag(s).
The "Guapo" was bigger, had more pockets, kept it's shape when empty, had a padded back and a longer shoulder strap.

I'm sure it will be just as indestructible, and it will do it's job nicely. But unless someone can help me order a bag from a site in Japan, the only site that still seems to have a Guapo for sale, I will forever miss my Guapo-ness.

(site for the store in japan, just in case: http://www.cycle-yoshida.com/motocross/timbuk2/comuter/guapo_page.htm I sent them an eMail asking about international orders/shipping and got one generic reply, which I translated through babelfish. I don't know anyone doing that "teaching english in Japan" thing right now, or else I'd call them up immediately)

the new bag: