Here are some other photos from our trip- I surprisingly didn’t actually take that many – but I suppose that’s a good gauge for how whirlwindy it was.

It’s a very cool project that looks at the need for emergency housing in a post-disaster situation( as an alternative to the ubiquitous and infamous FEMA trailers)
The structure is made up of plywood ribs and beams all designed on a computer then cut out of plywood and bolted together then shrink wrapped and held together in compression.

It was very cool and the structure is going to be exhibited soon at a big show in NYC.

Brian said that they needed some pictures and I had a camera – so voila.

So we put garage doors on in the rain. They are awesome but it was interesting to say the least. It also was not easy. If we had not had Mike to help us we would have been up a creek.

Pencil Portrait, originally uploaded by erictwright.
One of the girls in our first career day session came up afterwards with this sketch of us.

I was signed up to speak at a career day in April at Gadsden City High School. It was pretty interesting to speak to the high school students about Journalism – and what I actually do day to day.

One of the students doodled this drawing of me and another one of my co-presenters.

Pretty cool if you ask me.

C had another pub crawl – this time featuring the crowd-pleaser Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

It was awesome as usual. The costumes were great and my friend Andy won the contest dressed up as the big red Chevy with a Rolling Stones soundtrack.
This post is late so I won’t go into all of the details but the highlights were.

Chris Harrison’s great lectures.
Starting at Back 40 Beer Co.
Finishing at The Blacktone Pub
C’s awesome job in bringing such an amazing thing to Gadsden Alabama

Bees everywhere, originally uploaded by erictwright.
I was out shooting for a story at a honey operation – it’s hard to get used to bees crawling around on you.

Via Flickr:
I was out shooting for a story at a honey operation – it’s hard to get used to bees crawling around on you.

My friend Jeremy rocks the Gadsden music scene. He is part of several bands that have big a big part of the Gadsden music community. The band has recently reformulated – but still has Jeremy on guitar and vocals. So we shot some photos for the newly reformulated and originally named – The Jeremy Jackson Band He needed some new promo photos so we crashed The Blackstone Pub and Eatery on Monday night and made some pictures that for some pressing promo stuff.

I can be pretty much a one trick pony with photos like these. Gridded Octa and a gridded rim with a brick wall. It wasn’t super creative but it got the job done – and aside from a drunken ‘lady’ and I use the term lady loosely trying to hit on Jeremy – it went smoothly and quickly.



Chair, originally uploaded by erictwright.
Pretty stoked that President Obama was my lighting test subject today, I think.

Via Flickr:
Pretty stoked that President Obama was my lighting test subject today, I think.

So – good buddy Kris Catoe called us up a few weeks/month ago asking us if we could use a dresser with all of the drawers missing. We said of course.

It had been sitting in the shop collecting dust and it had been a handy place to keep project parts. That said I want to reorganize the shop so I needed to make some space and this was a good candidate.

It ended up being much easier than i thought. I knocked off the rails that the drawers rode on, removed the stile/drawer faces which we conveniently tenoned and riding in a dado. They slipped out with a little persuasion.

I cut new shelves out of MDF. I only had enough for 4 – which worked out as the drawers were pretty shallow. I made cleats from 1x1s and set them at quasi equal distances.

(at this point there was a minor issue that caused my an disproportional amount of frustration) I had been carefully using my level to make sure that the shelf cleats were perfectly level – no one likes tilty shelves after all. But as I crawled inside to screw in the last cleat. The structure rocked. I realized then that it was sitting askance on our gravel and concrete – uneven floor and that while I may have been making the shelves level with the earth, my base was not level.

I found scrap wood to get the whole thing leveled off and adjusted my cleats. Disaster averted.
I popped the shelves in, one had to be trimmed a skosh more on the table saw.

I popped the style/faces in, squared them up with the shelves and tacked a few finish nails in. Easy peasy.

Now Carol gets to paint.

In a pre-church, caffeine fueled bust of inspiration – I decided to make some porky goodness. I mashed together some recipes from the internet and made this Italian-esque pigmeat contraption. It was remarkably easy – I just need to dramatically refine my butterflying technique. That was incredibly hard – and I had to apply a lot of cosmetic bacon.

Via Flickr:
Butterflied pork loin – stuffed with pecans, olives, spinach, garlic, onions and a shipload of herbs. Oh – and wrapped with bacon.

It was tasty.