Fools.

Why not celebrate some of the school’s other fine aspects, instead of a brawling hockey team?

The University of North Dakota has many fine areas of study, including law, for example. They are the new Fighting Sue.

Get your shirts and mugs today.

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(Other names suggested during discussion with friends include borrowing a page from Prince’s book and referring to the team as the Team Formerly Known As The Fighting Sioux. This would require a large amount of real estate on the back of a jersey unless it was shortened to TFKATFS, or an androgynous symbol like Prince used. Additionally, it was mentioned that they could be the Fighting Sues, with a mascot of two fighting women. Though this would not be a stretch from the reality of what two women will inevitably do, it made little sense otherwise. The possibility of allowing for a 10 percent tuition discount for students with the name of Sue did add some weight to the “pros” column of that suggestion. Quite obviously, we had too much time on our hands.)

Visiting the shop is a fun experience in its own right; it’s clean and peaceful and airy and full of great pottery and all things related to tea.

My favorite teas — that is, the teas that make up my now three-cups-a-day routine — are:

• White Peach: Pai Mu Tan white peony from China, with peach flavor.
• Blue Clouds Over Dakota: Sencha green tea, blueberry and vanilla flavor, lavender flowers.
• Dakota Sunrise: Sencha green tea, raspberry and lemon flavor, rose petals.

I just picked up a canister of “Starry Night”, an herbal tea made especially for Glance Spa and Salon here in Bismarck. It has chamomile, lemon myrtle, spearmint, and lavender flowers. I’ve not tried it, but the smell of it is heavenly.

I prefer loose teas, and I get the TeaSac natural tea bags to use for steeping. They also offer a variety of other tea brands (loose and in bags) such as The Republic of Tea, as well as other tea-related food and products.

You definitely want to try their tea, if you’re a serious tea-lover. I’ve gotten a few blog readers addicted, so you’re in good company if you should do the same. Give them a call. Tell them Julie sent ya’.

The opening salvo features Brutus in a formal setting lacking anything of interest. Since I am unable to have my cat here with me in my apartment, I’ll be making everything up. This will likely increase the breadth of topics, since in real life, he does nothing and eats from a food bowl surrounded my mouse traps so the mice don’t eat his food.

It’s a great start to an exciting series.

A friend recently sent me an email and indicated both surprise (“I just found this on your site!”) and interest in one of the art formats I make available for commission.

Originally, I had it buried several sub-pages deep on my site with the following inglorious description:

Travel Maps: Remember your travels, trips and vacations through a custom-painted map that depicts your route and any other key events or visual elements you’d like included. This is an excellent way to remember your travels and have a great display piece.

My friend wanted to know more about it.

I can see why; my description is brief, indeed, and does little to entice anyone to pursue it further. It then occurred to me that perhaps others would, too, and so I decided to pull it up on the front page of this site and give it its own blog post.

Basically, a travel map is a map that depicts an event or time in a person’s life that can in some way be geographically mapped. Calling it a “travel” map limits what it is, frankly. The map can depict more than just travel. College, career, moving, children, vacations, pets, work, dream locations, family — anything that can somehow be depicted in a map form will work, not limited to time, but to geography.

The image I have shown here is one I did for a friend for a cruise. The style of your map doesn’t have to have this look, but this worked with the kind of subject matter at hand. The map being more than just a mere map means that I included additional things in it. Though I won’t tell you all of them (that is private, for the customer), you’ll see I have included everything from the weather on the cruise dates, activities at various stops, airport diagrams, and, if you could see it up close, the entire border has the cruise ship official description (tonnage, engines — everything) written in tiny writing all the way around. There are lots of other elements I gleefully sneaked in that won’t make sense or be noticed by the casual viewer, but will mean something to the person to whom the map was intended for.

If you are interested, please contact me directly. We can discuss your project, pricing, materials, themes, stylistic concerns, colors, ideas, etc.