There are some things that last an eternity, like Ammit consuming your soul and there are others that will go away with the blink of a heavily mascaraed eye. The latter was foretold by Anubis in preparation for King Tut’s final tour before being, well, locked back in another tomb…this time likely for about as long as it was in there the first go around.

According to the Seattle Times, we’ll be able to see the Egyptian expo beginning May 24th. Until then, we just have to deal with this jackal weighing our hearts against feathers. Be sure to be kind to your fellow drivers in case you end up in front of this 26′ monstrosity.

So you may have noticed I disappeared for a moment with the blog. I’ve been slammed with work as well as … enjoying life and disconnecting a bit. Lots of photos were shot over the past few weeks, but somehow the vast majority didn’t make their way online. As such, here are some of my favorites.

Fallen Tulip Pedals

An awesome smoking lil lamb in Georgetown

I love commissioned graffiti, especially when it’s creative and fun. Down in Pioneer Square on Main and … we’ll call it 3rd … is a beautiful new piece. That’s mostly black and white with some awesome pops of vibrant triangular colors. Beautiful. There are three faces with similar treatments. Definitely make your way down and check it out.

The Beastie Boys have been a part of my musical soul for as long as I can remember. Mike D, Adrock and MCA have mixed up some of the best tracks over the decades probably getting more of my air time than any other band.

With the death today of MCA, I feel like a part of my musical soul has shattered a bit.

If you feel what I’m feeling then it’s a musical masterpiece
Hear what I’m dealing with then that’s cool at least
What’s running through my mind comes through in my walk
True feelings are shown from the way that I talk
And this is me y’all-I MC
Y’all my name is MCA and I still do what I please

So we give thanks … and an amazing amount of gratitude for the musical mark you’ve left on this world. You’ve inspired thousands of kids to scratch their parents records, wear goofy mustaches and slide over hoods of cars, having 808s hit your chest to the point where your heart remixes itself to the beat enveloping the crowd. You will perpetually remain at the #1 concert for your acoustic set at The Crocodile. You and your crew are masterful musicians and visionaries.

What’s gonna set you free?
Look inside and you’ll see
When you’ve got so much to say
It’s called gratitude, and that’s right

Time to pass the mic and pour out some brass monkey. Sad day for music.

A gorgeous tulip centerpiece Spun made with flowers from PCC.

I love how each layer gets stronger and stronger, supporting the frailty and beauty of the elements above. Such a strong column together, bringing joy and life into our home.

Thank you my Love for such a keen eye.

For some time now Spun has been asking me to weld a C-table for us. This weekend I finally had the opportunity to do so. With a couple dozen feet of 1/2″ square steel tubing, a gorgeous piece of cambia poplar from Crosscut Hardwoods in SODO, and a bit of some blue epoxy to fill in the board splits and channels made with a router, we were off to the races … or rather couch with this awesome new addition to the living room.

It’s super stable when pulled up flush to the couch and makes for an excellent side table when we don’t have beverages or small plates to share. Based on how well this fusion of wood and steel went I’m thinking I need to replace the gigantic slab of cold rolled steel we have for our current coffee table. Having to move it daily for Kinect exercising is half the work out. Hopefully we’ll get another free weekend to dream up the next addition to the house!

This morning Spun and I went running in Seward Park. She heads down there most mornings for Southside Booty Camp, but they’re on break for the week, so the trainee became the trainer as she pushed me to run trails and keep up with her as we tore around fern protected corners and mossy bends.

At one point, we were making our way around Owl Trail and were greeted by, you guessed it, an owl. We’ve seen them in the zoo, but never in the wild. What a stunning bird! The robins and other smaller birds were harassing him/her a fair amount so it took to the air and banked around some trees effortlessly to evade the airborne snacks.

After a few nice strolling points, and a couple sprints, we made our way to the north shore, which is one of my favorite vantage points in the park. The blossoms are in full bloom and Spring is in full swing.

Lots going on this week as well. My sister’s fiancé was promoted at long last (congrats Charlie!), the Magnifying the Universe infographic from last week now has more Spanish users than those in the US, North by Nine is going strong, Spun is going through some great interviews for her dream job and will likely be delivering a baby this week. Oh and one of our dear family friends … or famship as we like to call it … is retiring tomorrow. Congrats!!!

Things are really in full spring this week.

For some time now we’ve been promising our vegetarian attendees of the Supper Club that we’ll devote a night just to them. What better day to do it than Earth Day, right?

As it turns out, we had all omnivores at the party, no veggies. However, that didn’t stop us from having some great food … mostly desserts actually.

The Farm and Potato Bleu Cheese pizzas from Flying Squirrel Pizza, veggie lasagna, a reconstructed edamame purée with micro greens and tiny tomatoes, pea “flan” with oyster mushrooms were the mains. For dessert we had a Momofuko sugar butter bomb that was so sweet we had to cut it with … yes … chocolate cheesecake. A lovely strawberry shortcake trifle, some super tasty baked blackberry deliciousness, a palette cleansing traditional Polish poppyseed cake.

All in all, it was delicious and sweet tooths were definitely satiated. I have to say, we did alright though I think some of the actual vegetarians would claim that this isn’t actually “standard vegetarian fare.”

If you attended, please paste a link to your recipe or just throw it inline in the comments below so that others can enjoy.

For the past couple months I’ve been working freelancing on a number of different projects through my personal LLC, Mandril Design.

Recently, one of the most gorgeous endeavors and massive undertakings I’ve ever worked on was for Number Sleuth. Through Killer Infographics, my cousin’s amazing infographic shop here in Seattle and with Science is Beautiful, we created a pair of infographics to help illustrate just how big the universe is. One is a static infographic which is a staggering 1000px wide by 20,000px tall showing the relative scale of over a hundred objects within the observable universe (infographic here).

The graphics used in the static version were individually rendered out into high res versions and paired up with an XML file which dictates their scale as well as 10xE position and some descriptive text. Some fancy math and a bunch of tweening with the help of my favorite tweening engine, TweenLite’s AS3 classes, and you have an opportunity to zoom all the way from the observable universe down to a hydrogen atom’s nucleus. All in all, that’s a zoom of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000x … not something I think they carry at REI or your neighborhood science gadget store.

You’re going to want to blow this up full screen by the way. It’s infinitely better than in the tiny box below.

The Universe made possible by Number Sleuth

Today I did a quick search in Google and found that the infographic was spreading like wildfire. Guy Kawasaki tweeted about it, somehow it made it’s way to Alltop and Digg and I think most inspiring thus far, it was in National Geographic’s blog. As a long time science lover, it’s truly an honor to have my work anywhere on the pages of National Geographic … and apropos that it’s on their site given my love of the web.

Between these sites and a few others, it’s already garnered over a thousand likes, has been tweeted a few hundred times and pinned to a number of boards on Pinterest. I can’t wait to see how viral it goes over the next few weeks. Definitely look forward to the next endeavor with Number Sleuth, Killer Infographics and Science is Beautiful. There’s a whole universe of gorgeous out there that needs to be shared. Definitely an honor to illustrate it in this way for people to get a good understanding of really just how tiny we are in relationship to so many other things.

Please let me know what you think and definitely share with your friends and family so that they can be inspired as well. I can only imagine if I would have seen something like this when I was a kid. Boom … mind blown.

I ran downtown today to have lunch with some friends and was surprised by another Destroy wheat paste poster in an alley I’ve never been down in Pioneer Square.

I love the humor and irony of having an outdoor thermostat. We’re perpetually trying to adjust things that are out of our control, thinking that if we just do this one thing or that thing, we’ll have “the perfect warm, sunny Seattle day” … or whatever fits that metaphor for you. In the end, more often than not, the dial is controlled by forces outside of our own and we can either fight the futile fight, or grab a jacket and enjoy the partly sunny, perpetual chance of rain type days.

I vote for the latter.