The SubZero Street Fair is next weekend. Friday & Saturday. It’s an art festival that I’ve been vending at for a few years now. Today I went online to order blanks to print more San Jose tees but they were sold out at all the places I shop at. Luckily, I have 45 blank tees sitting in a box that were originally going to used for my original Eyes, Mouths & Noses design. EMN will have to wait because the San Jo’ tees sell better. I’m waiting to hear back from my screen printers to get the ball rolling and drop off the blanks. I hope I can get them back in time before next Friday.

It took me 4 hours to prep the music and all my notes for two events this weekend. A 50th anniversary party in Woodside on Friday and a wedding in Monterey on Sunday. I had to prep for Sunday’s event tonight because on Saturday I’m going to Elk Grove for my grandma’s surprise birthday party. It’s a busy weekend, and a lot of driving, but I’m ready to crush and have a little fun!

Tomorrow I’m DJing a wedding so tonight I spent a few hours preparing music, notes and logistics for the equipment. This is normal. I’m in DJ Mode long before the ceremony starts

I had way too much fun today painting live with the TWC gang (Together We Create) at Viva Calle. I was glued to my mural for hours, getting organized, transferring my sketch, coloring and doing the line work. It turned out a bit wonky, especially the bottom half, but I didn’t mind. It was gonna get torn down and reclaimed after the event. It was exercise in painting quickly, and in a way that bystanders can see and understand what’s happening on the wall during the process. It was also my first time in years using spray paint on a mural and only second time live-painting and vending at the same time. Major learning experience!

I just finished inking what Im going to paint at Viva Calle Sunday morning. My car’s already loaded with paints and everything needed to live-paint and my t-shirts, which I’m hoping to sell a few. Now I just gotta get some sleep before my alarm goes off in a few hours. Should be fun!

I and the rest of the TWC (Together We Create) crew will be setup in Japantown on 5th & Jackson from 1- am to 3 pm.

I spent the day getting ready for the flea market tomorrow. My car is packed to the gills with stuff to sell. Now I gotta sleep for an hour and half to be out the door by 5:45 AM to get in line for a spot. I’m going with my cousin. We’ve done this before a few times and it’s always fun.

After a 7 mile hike on Tuesday and working the 420 event yesterday, today was a much needed rest day. Tomorrow I gotta prepare for a flea market day on Saturday. My cousin and I will be vending.

I’m still preparing my taxes. All my income & expenses are in order and I’ve started plugging numbers into TurboTax. Tomorrow is the deadline and, I think, I have until midnight to file. Hopefully it won’t take me that long.

I spent most of the day reviewing self employment expenses & income. I want to make sure my records are bulletproof before I plug any data into TurboTax. I wish I had done this part sooner.

Today I started pulling documents for tax prep and reading my notes from last year. Tomorrow I’m going to review all my business expenses and income and maybe start plugging away at Turbo Tax.

I forgot how much time it takes to process a timeline and prepare music for a wedding. I was up all night prepping for tomorrow. My first wedding in almost two years. Wish me luck!

Tonight I went into work to prep for the 31 Skulls Giveaway + Art Party we're having on Saturday. I laid out black linens across the counters where we'll have all the skulls on display. A couple weeks ago I mounted some lights above the counter to light the skulls as well. There's still much more work to do in preparation so I'm going back in tomorrow to do some more.

Here's the link to register for a chance to win a skull on Saturday.

I spent all day Sunday getting my artwork ready to hang for my installation tomorrow at the Martin Luther King Library. I had to make sure all my paintings had the appropriate hangers to use with the library's hook & wire system of displaying work so I went to Home Depot to buy some D-ring hangers. Afterwards, I realized I needed more blankets to wrap my work, to keep them from getting scratched during transport, so I drove to Wal Mart before closing and bought a few of the cheapest throw blankets they had. Now I have nine pieces wrapped and ready to hang for tomorrow. 

Today was supposed to be a rest day before DJing the Local Color Estate Sale on Sunday. Instead, I distributed a ceramic skull and shipped another (to 31 Skulls artists). I also had to go to the printers and get the brochure I designed last night printed & folded. I did manage to take 2 hour nap before prepping some music for tomorrow's event. I'll get some rest on Monday.

I spent the day preparing for Sunday's Rose, White & Blue event. I pulled everything from my checklist of stuff, built a display for my buttons (pictured below) and framed all 5 FRANKIE MCFLY USA print colorways. Everything took longer than anticipated and I didn't do a full set up of my booth at home to see how it'll look. Hopefully there's no issues at the event tomorrow when I set up the new displays & merch for the first time. Either way it's gonna be fun and I can't wait to be out there.

My grandma and I finished our puzzle tonight! It took us longer than usual to do a 1000 pieces because I had to work on the Valley Verde paint-by-numbers project last week then an impromptu 3-day trip to Las Vegas. Now that it's done I can start working on my booth for the Rose, White & Blue event this Sunday, the 4th of July. I want to make a table top display for my buttons and prints so that'll be my goal for Saturday. 

I did not anticipate was how out of shape I was before DJing last night after a 12 month hiatus. Before covid shut down all weddings & events I'd been DJing every weekend for 7 years straight. I was used to the physical demands of the job. And although I'd been hiking on a regular basis for the last year, I wasn't prepared to be standing for 11 straight hours yesterday. Today I was practically dead to the world. I slept in late and when I woke up my feet, legs and back were all crazy sore. I stayed in bed most of the day, watched a couple movies and only left the house to go eat. I hope tomorrow's better because I gotta start sourcing materials and preparing for Saturday's event. I'll be doing an interactive live painting thingie downtown. It'll be my first time doing something like this and I need to figure out how I'm gonna accomplish it by Friday. It should be a lot fun and hopefully a lot less taxing on my body.

I spent two hours this afternoon preparing a background music playlist for my buddy's 40th birthday party today. I sat with him a couple nights ago and went over a bunch of music he liked and today I organized the tracks by genre and created a 5 hour playlist for the party. Afterwards, I gathered my speaker, my old iPhone 4 running Spotify and all the necessary cables before getting ready for the party. Later, when I arrived at his house I could hear music coming from the backyard. When I went back there it turned out my buddy found a Pandora station, with music he liked, to play on his brand new boombox and didn't need my music or gear anymore. Womp-womp-womp... Oh well! Less work for me and I was able to just enjoy the party as a guest. It had been years, longer than the pandemic, since I last saw some of the people there tonight. 

Monday was tax day. It got extended from April 14th because of covid. I still waited till the last day to file. This was my third year reporting self-employed income and even though the preparation has gotten easier after streamlining my record keeping process, it still sucks a load of ass. I took lots of notes and screenshots as I filled out the Turbotax forms to make it easier for next year but I might start paying someone else to do my taxes.

It sounds like an organization of trained & certified cats you can hire to do your taxes. In actuality it's an abbreviation for Tax Categories and I spent most of Sunday making sure I properly categorized every transaction I made in 2020. Monday is tax day and I'm glad I'm almost done. 

I saw my doctor today for a checkup and to go over my lab results. (that bruise on my arm in the picture below is where they drew blood a couple days ago) Aside from being overweight and slightly high blood pressure my doctor said my test results look really good. Better numbers than most people coming back for doctor visits after the covid shutdown. I was pleasantly surprised. I thought they were going to be bad, especially since I'm currently about 10 lbs over what I usually weigh this time of year. There's still plenty work I need to do health wise but I left my doctor's office feeling good. I wanted to treat myself so I visited my local comic shop, Legends, inside Eastridge Mall, and picked up a bunch of $1 comics. All of them are new but they're reprints of old books. After returning home I got ready and went on a hike at Alum Rock Park. I did all of the Penitencia Creek Trail, almost 6 miles, then came home and did some more work on my taxes. I have this weekend to finish as tax day is this coming Monday.

434.1This afternoon I went and bought a heavy-duty speaker stand for my single QSC K10 speaker and a couple 1/4" to XLR cables. I'd been using my work's DJ equipment all these years and now that I'm buying stuff for myself I'm reminded of how expensive everything is. Later, after practicing some mixing, I started tinkering with my bikes rear brakes and I think I fixed them. They weren't tight enough before. Now I gotta figure out why my front brakes squeak when I slow down or come to a stop. Tonight I finally went back to working on my taxes. I added up all the miles I'd driven in for business purposes in 2020 and it was 434.1.

I took my bike back to Good Karma Bikes to get looked at this afternoon. Yesterday I took it for a ride and I wasn’t able to shift into the third/highest gear in the front. Today, at the shop, the guy tests it by turning the pedals and using the shifter and it starts working fine. He tells me to take it for ride and It worked like normal. So weird. Afterwards the repair guy said if I have any problems with it to bring it back and they’ll swap the shifter. I’m really liking the service at Good Karma Bikes. After returning home then working on the computer for hours I stopped to bake cookie dough that’d been sitting in the fridge all week. My friend made the dough and the cookies came out delicious. Tonight I also pulled out the DJ controller to start practicing again. I’m DJing my friends 40th birthday party next month and need to shake the rust off. And if that wasn’t enough, I also started sketching something weird on a 18”x24” sheet of paper. I was hoping I’d finish inking it tonight but I stated getting too wrapped up in details and didn’t come close.