This is a true story. This past Saturday, as I was listening to the Gulf disaster unfold, I decided that enough is enough. I simply can’t be a willing participant in the dumb petroleum game. “I need an electric station wagon. Where is my electric station wagon? Who hasn’t thought of this yet?” After 5 minutes online, I found it. The future is here, thanks to EnVision Motor Company.

The Electric Wagon (do you guys need a branding consultant, by the way?) sports a nickel sodium chloride battery and has a range of 200 + miles and speeds of 75 MPH +. This is exactly what I was looking for. At $37,000, it’s a little steep for me, but the maintenance & fuel savings seems to make up for the price differential after 6-10 years or so. Oh, and it qualifies for the full $7,500 Federal tax credit.

Nice work, EnVision!

Well, we did it. We have a signed purchase agreement for a home. We had our eyes on this house for some time, and the timing was right for us to buy. I feel as if we have achieved the pinnacle. We are officially living the high life, and I’m thrilled.

A couple of years back I went to a group show here in Milwaukee. Among the featured artists was work by Kate Bingaman-Burt. It looks like she’s getting a lot of press lately, launching her book this month and being featured on Swiss-Miss. I was stoked. I get excited when someone I recognize receives good press. Her work is quite memorable, and in this current climate, that’s saying something. Congrats on the new book, Kate.

I am the Twin Cities for a long weekend, and I feel lucky. Not only do I get to see some of my great friends here, but I also get to see some new work by Mike Perry over at the MCAD main gallery. I’m stoked, because I just read an interview with him in the winter issue of Elephant. I forgot that I like it here!

It took about a week in all. Late nights, coffee, excitement, frustration and finally happiness. My new site! It might not seem like much, but that’s the idea. I wanted something insanely easy to maintain, light, modular, flexible, and friendly. I found it in Indexhibit and WordPress. I also wanted something simple and understated. I’m not really into making the latest gee-whiz site with super-duper technical and visual fireworks. It’s not really my style. I don’t like hollering. I wanted a site that was cleaner, leaner, and allowed the actual work being displayed to come to the forefront.

Also, the previous CMS I was using worked fine, but was a total nightmare when it came to blogging and allowing comments. And really, what use is blogging if people can’t participate? Also, when it came to displaying my work, I couldn’t find an application that suited me. The developer community was robust, but if you wanted something that really worked well, you usually had to pay for it. After looking around, I found that WordPress and Indexhibit was a great solution and a total upgrade for me.

Indexhibit gives me a lot of options when it comes to displaying my work, and also gives me plenty of options for adding image titles, captions, and descriptions of my projects. It also serves as an archive, which is icing on the cake.

As far as migrating all of my old posts, well, let’s say that trying to transfer the contents of my un-named old CMS database to my WordPress database is like trying to canoe the Snake River after spring thaw. I might try it, but don’t expect it to be pretty. I am going to try to bring over some of my favorite old posts, but it’s not a priority right now.

But overall, I’m stoked.

So take a look around, and let me know your thoughts. There will be some small changes over the coming days ahead, and I’d like to hear from you. By the way, if any of you are browsing this site using IE 7, let me know how it’s working.

This is the moment of embarking. All auspicious signs are in place.