Mike Fowler | Artist, Vegan, Human

Dear Gosh, Mike Isn’t Expired

December 26th, 2009 § 1

I know, I knowwwwwwwwwwww. The last update to this blog was mid-October. Unacceptable, for sure. Let’s try to sum up some things so that I can move on to bigger and more important matters.

I just finished the most hellish semester of school that I will likely ever go through. I can not begin to illustrate how little I would ever want to go through another 15-set of 100 hour work weeks. If I ever had to put my stress management skills to use, well, it was these past few months. The good news? I’ve developed a healthy new hobbies obsession, namely climbing, as my outdated previous entry would hint at. By the end of the semester I was at the rock gym roughly 3 to 4 times each week, or, as much as I could manage given my workload. There is absolutely no intention of stopping right now, and honestly I’m more set on getting better at climbing than I have been at anything for a long while. Senior Team Project didn’t go quite as well as originally expected, and I found out a few days ago that my team has regrettably been cut. Nevertheless, life goes on, and in the spring I will be joining a new team to help them lead their project to completion. Got my last two required liberal arts classes out of the way, meaning I’m home free for my final semester and I’ll be taking all game-related classes, FINALLY.

The BEST news of course is that I have been offered a position right out of school at Hoozinga, a recent startup run by three Champlain College professors, including two of the department heads for my major. To my understanding, they are doing advertising games for Burlington-based clients. So, in other words, I get to stay in Burlington (post-college wish #1 COMPLETE) and I get to work on art/programming/music/web design/anything else for video games (post-college wish #2 COMPLETE). Excellent.

So, I suppose that brings me to today. My time spent home so far has mainly consisted of two things that have been severely lacking in my life for the past couple years, those things being sleep and video games. Ironic as it is, my time spent playing games has dramatically decreased since I started MAJORING in game design, and lately has come to almost a complete halt. So needless to say, playing through Mirror’s Edge in two nights (and the prospect of starting Left 4 Dead 2 as soon as I finish writing this) was and is very exciting for me. In addition, going to sleep without setting an alarm is a privilege I forgot what it was like to have, and I’m taking full advantage before college ends and that concept ends (except maybe for weekends). This year’s Christmas has been rather excellent, both in wonderful gifts received from loved ones and in the presence of family and friends to spend time with. New Years is right around the corner, and I’m honestly totally pumped for the start of a new decade.

OH AND ALSO! Go listen to tracks from Casey Immoor’s new album (http://www.myspace.com/immoor) and thank him for making excellent music and for being the MAN and sending Nikole a signed copy of his first album and a poster. Which she gave them to me for Christmas, so thank her too

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And My Climbing Obsession Begins…

October 19th, 2009 § 2

At the beginning of the semester this year I start climbing with the rock climbing club through Champlain. Pretty good deal, you get to go once each week and pay $4 for your rental and for 2 hours of climbing/bouldering.

It wasn’t enough.

I almost immediately wanted to get my own gear and a pass to the rock gym, Petra Cliffs, in Burlington. Problem being: money. Well, it only took me a few days to realize that I own(ed) a $300 longboard that I had used about 6 or 7 times in the past 2 years. Upon that realization, I posted the board for sale on Facebook and Craigslist, and tweeted a few times to get the word out, and I sold within a week, for $220, which is probably about as much as I would have gotten for a used 3 year old board.

Jump to a week later, this Sunday, when I went down to The Outdoor Gear Exchange in Burlington and spent about an hour there talking with one of the climbing employees and spend some money getting shoes, a harness and chalk. Later that day, went to the free climb day that Petra was having where they were also selling $99 passes good through the end of December, which ends up being about $50 cheaper than it would be to get three 1-month passes.

And jump to today, on my third day straight of climbing. My hands are sore and starting to callus, my arms are aching like never before, but I feel great. I can already feel myself getting stronger, and I’ve set a goal for myself to complete at least one route in the bouldering cave that I hadn’t been able to do the previous time. I’m normally pretty good at picking out things I’m becoming obsessed with, and this definitely feels like that. But ya know what, I have no problem whatsoever with that.

I’m actually making a new post category for climbing. That’s how positive I am that this is going to be something that sticks with me for quite some time

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Weekly Playlist 10/14/09 (acoustic 5 genres)

October 16th, 2009 § 0

I volunteered to pick our theme for this week’s playlist contest over at http://brittanysoregonsummer.blogspot.com/. I wanted to do something with acoustic music, but not just anything. The challenge for the week was to pick 5 acoustic songs from 5 different artists who each typically play a different genre. So all songs are acoustic, but one band might primarily play folk music, while the next is a metal band, and the next is an electronic band. Five artists, five songs, five genres. Here’s my entry …

>> 5 Artists, 5 Songs, 5 Genres <<

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Define: Irony

October 4th, 2009 § 0

Yesterday afternoon I was minding my business when a group of emails from Freecycle came in. Naturally, I glanced at them, prepared to quickly archive and forget about them as I commonly do. One caught my eye. It read something along the lines of “Realistic Turntable/AM FM Radio/8 Track Player and Recorder”. REPLY REPLY REPLY! Yes PLEASE! I am INTERESTED!

Not even an hour later, I get a response. It’s mine! When can I make the drive to Milton to pick it up? I respond to the gracious offerer and ask Carolyn if she wants to drive up the next day and pick it up. All is well.

Today. The drive to Milton goes fine, and after asking a kind boy at a gas station how to get to the correct address since I’d forgotten to print out directions, we managed to find the house.

Irony strikes.

Irony at it’s finest. A taxidermist giving away a turntable to a vegan. Carolyn and I had a good laugh, and that’s pretty much the extent of my story.

P.S. I don’t have an album to test it with yet (my collection is at home, hopefully being brought up this weekend) but it appears like the turntable functionality of the unit does not work. The spindle doesn’t turn when you power the player on. /cry

P.P.S. But my fingers are crossed.

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Weekly Playlist 10/5/09 (happy)

October 3rd, 2009 § 0

One of the other blogs I’m a part just decided to start a weekly themed playlist comp. Pick an emotion, make a playlist of 10 songs. The first theme for this week was ‘happy’. Listen!

http://themikeman.net/public/playlist/

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Vermont Local Challenge – Day 5 (Curtain Close)

September 26th, 2009 § 0

I wish I could report a more thrilling ending to my week of being a localvore but to be honest, it was most interesting at its beginnings. Last night I ended up making pizza and then cutting my challenge off there. As much as I would have loved to make the full 7 days, there were a few things that were becoming an issue:

Money - This week I ended up spending $50 on groceries, as compared to my normal $25-30 each week. Now, I understand that I could have spent less if I had more carefully planned out my meals and used mainly fruits and vegetables as the main ingredients for every meal, but the concept of a local challenge really made me want to make some regular meals that I normally do but with all 100% local ingredients.
Variety - Nutrition aside, I’ll admit I was having a little trouble with variety. It’s been about 6 months since I became a vegan now, and in that type I’ve really expanded my cooking abilities and creative preparation to a pretty big spread, and cutting it down to only locally available ingredients definitely threw me off a little bit. I imagine that if I were to do something like this again, learning ahead of time about raw food recipes would have helped, because so many complete meals can be made almost entirely of veggies and nuts, two things I could get local.
Nutrition - Unfortunately one of my most important sources of protein I can’t find locally. Beans, lentils and legumes are one of those things that vegans need to have in their daily diet to provide not just protein but also for keeping up iron levels. Somebody has got to produce beans in Vermont, but I have been unable to find any so far.

Anyways, it’s been a good experience. But I did very much enjoy some peanut butter this morning with breakfast

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Vermont Local Challenge – Day 3/4

September 24th, 2009 § 0

Half way through! I’m just going to let the videos do the talking…

Day 3

Day 4

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Vermont Local Challenge – Day 2

September 22nd, 2009 § 1

Horrah! Day 2 has gone great, and the big meal of the day came out excellent.

Breakfast was some more granola, but this time with some raspberries in it instead of apple. Lunch, leftover pizza from last night, just as delicious as it was when it came out of the oven, and half of the apple I saved from yesterday morning.

SO. Dinner tonight. Carolyn came over to help me cook and then Husam joined us after he was back to make a delish salad and eat with us. We made baked eggplant with homemade breadcrumbs (first time I’ve ever done that!) and pasta sauce over the top. Husam’s salad and a cold glass of Vermont Soy vanilla milk rounded out the meal. I’ll let pictures and a video do the talking.

This last video really has nothing to do with the local challenge, but it came out today and it’s a great satire, and also very true.

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Vermont Local Challenge – Day 1

September 21st, 2009 Comments Off

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Nothing I didn’t know…

September 12th, 2009 § 0

Finally a Venn Diagram of my life.

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