Today was a lazy Sunday, spent mostly watching football. The 49ers lost to the Rams in the championship game. Tomorrow, California's sales & use tax returns are due so I’ll be working on that and I’ll be following up on a potential mural job.

Today I hiked Penitencia Creek Trail at Alum Rock Park again and I drew this little sketch of a UFO being viewed from inside a bedroom window. The thought of aliens coming into my room at night and being abducted by UFOs used to scare the shit outta me when I was a little kid.

I'm in the early stages of purging a bunch of stuff I've accumulated over the years. Today I went through a bag of stuff I used to have pinned to my bedroom wall in the while I was in high school. Mid to late nineties. I threw away a bunch of crap but held on to these concert flyers. I didn't go to the Danzig or Pantera shows but I think I picked up these flyers around the time I went my first concert, to see Megadeth at the San Jose State Event Center in 1995.

Tonight I inked a little bit of Michelangelo from a sketch I drew last year. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were one of the main reasons I started drawing, back in the late 80s & early 90s. I liked the cartoon so much that I would draw the turtles over & over to try till they sorta resembled the cartoon.

This morning I met with a couple guys at their establishment to talk about doing a mural there. So far, so good. I measured their walls and will start working on a quote and maybe some sketches tomorrow. After that meeting I went hiking at Alum Rock Park. I hiked the Penitencia Creek Trail again and did a little better than before. It still kicked my ass but not as bad. At night I met up the Meeting of the Minds gang. That's where we get randomly paired up with other people and have to work on a canvas together. I got matched up with Tom and we did what looks like a giant red eye above the horizon, a yellow planet and a red sea monster.

Once again, I feel like I've accumulated too much stuff and it's time for another purge. That means tossing, giving away, donating and selling stuff I don't use anymore. Today I started by throwing away some junk. Soon I'll be going though everything in storage. It's fun to purge but it's a lot of work. I want this purge to be very thorough and get rid of a lot of shit.

And in other news, I've scheduled a meeting for tomorrow to discuss a possible new mural! Wish me luck!

I had a shitty afternoon and was pissed off for most of the day. I didn't do shit besides sit at a McDonalds for an hour and half, eating junk food and sketching, waiting for my car's oil change. I spent the rest of the day on my phone or TV watching YouTube videos. I haven't had a bad day like this in a long time and it fucking sucked.

Another ass kicking. My legs were cramping up right from the start. I had to take a a few breaks to massage my shins and calves. When I reached the end of the Penitencia Creek Trail I plopped down on a bench to rest and drew in my sketchbook for half an hour before heading back.

Last year I began doing my sexy pose upon completing a mural or installation.

Andrew, the photographer/videographer who's been documenting the Eastridge Mural asked me to send him the time lapse video of me drawing the mural design. The time lapse is automatically generated within the drawing app on the iPad. I exported the video, cut some of it out and sped it up. I think I sent Andrew a 5 minute version but I also made this 30 second cut.

Hiking the Penitencia Creek Trail at Alum Rock Park was relatively easy for me last summer. Before it got really hot. Before my knee injury. Before packing on the extra weight. Today I had to stop and rest multiple times, both ways, where as before I would only sit at the bench at the very end of the trail to draw before heading back. Another ass whooping. 

Tonight I went to watch the new Scream movie at Eastridge. The best part was leaving the theater and walking past my mural. I saw, for the first time, the freshly installed placard on the wall. The placard was proofed right after the community paint day, where mostly small kids left the mural looking so bad I didn't want my name attached to it anymore. I didn't want anyone to see the mural and think I painted it. Local Color insisted I keep my name on it so we settled on Designer credit. That's why it says, "Design by Frankie Mcfly, Painted by San Jose Community." This was before my artist friends Elba & Lucia helped me clean up the mural and made me feel proud of it again.

​I haven't been doing much drawing or sketching lately so tonight I got on the iPad and tweaked this sketch I drew last year. The major tweaks were the letters, eyes and the top of my head bursting open to reveal the N. Maybe later I'll ink it.

I hiked up to Eagle Rock again. It's still kicking my ass. While I was up there I parked my ass on a bench and drew in a sketchbook for 20 minutes before going back down. After the hike I went to pick up my new prescription glasses. My first pair. It's cool to be able to see things clearly again but it's going to take some getting used to. They're progressive lenses that my see farther away through the top half of the lens and read things up close through the bottom half. I'm already thinking of getting dedicated glasses for driving and reading so I don't have to constantly tilt me head up or down.

Shit, I got nothing interesting to report on today. I went on Costco & Target run ad bought a few things. Washed the dishes that have been piling up all weekend. Did my laundry and put away all the clothes, including the clean clothes that have been sitting in the basket all week. I also watched the 1996, made-for-tv movie, "Generation X," which is based on a comic book I used to love as a young teen. It was dogshit.

Nothing but pizza, the 49ers game, movies & more food on this lazy Sunday. The only artsy related thing I did was go through a bunch of sketchbooks looking for drawings I did of myself. I might do something with them.

Today was my second time hiking at Ed R. Levin Park in Milpitas and my friend's first. As we were walking back to our cars we heard a strange noise across the parking lot behind us and saw a huge tree branch fall. We walked over and saw that it fell inside the dog park. No one, or any dog, got hurt. Even the fence survived with minimal damage. It was pretty exciting on such a peaceful day at the park.

Tonight I finished the 550 piece Legend of Zelda puzzle I started a few days ago. I picked it up at Goodwill last year and I'm glad I finally got to it. Usually I do 1,000 or 1,500 piece puzzles with my grandma but this one I did by myself. Tomorrow I'll put it back in it's box maybe look for another Zelda fan to pass it on to.

At least I'm trying to. After a long hiatus due to the summer heat, a knee injury, and a month and a half of working on the Eastridge mural, I can't hike the same distances, or elevations, like I used to. I was able to hike 10 miles in 5 hours with 2,000 ft elevation gain and now I get my ass kicked hiking a lot less. Today I did 4.68 miles, with 500 ft of elevation, at Alum Rock Park, in just over 2 hours. It feels like I'm back at square one. 

I finally went and did something I'd been putting off for at least a year now. I got an eye exam. My vision is blurry when I read things up close and from a distance. The doctor said I have astigmatism and it's common for people when they hit 40. I'm not looking forward to wearing glasses but I do want to see clearly again. I tried on a few frames and found an inexpensive pair that I liked (didn't hate) and will be ready in a week.

Today felt a lot more productive. I received a call I'd been waiting on since yesterday morning. That freed me up to go for a 2 hour hike at Alum Rock Park. And, at night, after the mall closed, I went to Eastridge to get interviewed about the mural for a video that Local Color is putting together. It'll probably be a few weeks before that video is ready.

Today was not the most productive of days but I did make some progress on this 550 piece Legend of Zelda themed puzzle. 

I didn't do anything productive today, besides laundry, so I made this animated gif before bed. It's from the pictures I took at the mural at the end of each night, except for a bunch I didn't take after the community paint day.

I went for a hike at Alum Rock Park today. I hiked up to Eagle Rock, which is depicted on the Eastridge mural, which I also saw this evening when I went to the movies to watch Spiderman again. I saw that the anti-graffiti coat vendor left the masking paper on the mural. I wonder if he's going to come back and remove it or someone else is expected to do so. 

Today I dropped off the leftover cans of paint and equipment, from the Eastridge mural, at Local Color. After I do an interview for them I'll be officially done with the mural. I've been busy with other errands but can't wait to get back into another artsy fartsy project. Next week I'l be following up on a few leads. A couple of them are for murals and one is for a logo design.

I was told that the vendor applying the anti-graffiti coating on the Eastridge mural was going to lay tarps and mask it off today and apply the coating tomorrow. I wanted to clean it and do any necessary touch ups before it got coated so I went in tonight after the mall closed. When I arrived I saw that the vendor was still there and was about to begin rolling on the clear coat. He began applying the coating before I could inspect and clean the mural. He didn't wait. I jumped in, literally a few feet in front of him, and began dusting as he rolled the clear coat on behind me. It kinda bugged me, that he didn't wait for me after explaining why I was there, but the mural looked fine. I'll come back and take another look in a few days.