DELTA AIRLINES SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! However, until my little post here drives them out of business (oh, and don't think it won't - cuz it will) here is a picture of a pack of weiner dogs. They run wild in DC frightening any tourists who happen to be wandering about Willy Nilly. 

Therapy

There is something therapeutic about using an airports own wireless to complain about how much an airline sucks. I don't use that phrase lightly, but when the shoe fits... I must say that hearing the people complain about Delta causes me to feel that much more justified in my own feelings. They have been sitting here since 1:00pm this afternoon and are waiting for a flight that has been delayed (yet again), this time from 7:45pm until 8:40pm.

I am slightly less hot headed in light of these people's situation, however the feelings I have left seem even more justified. This industry is such a scam. I payed to fly from St. Louis to BWI. My flight out of St. Louis was delayed an hour, ok, no big deal - right? But this delay caused me to miss my connecting flight by 5 minutes. 5 MINUTES! They couldn't hold the aircraft for 5 minutes for me to connect. Now I'm on standby and may not even get to take this flight.

I am frustrated. So very frustrated.

That is all.

Thanksgiving Travel

Well, I'm headed home for Thanksgiving, which should be loads of fun. I haven't seen most of the people from St. Charles for going on a year and a half. Wow. It will be wonderful to see how things have changed, hopefully all for the better. I'm a little hesitant to go back to a place where there is no mass transit to usher you around everywhere, but I'm hoping I'll cope.

Holiday travel. I'm planning to get to the airport 2 hours early. I want to get there earlier than I would for a typical flight to NY, which I usually show up about 45 minutes early for, but I can't squeeze any more than 2 hours early out simply because I can't get to the airport any earlier. Hopefully it's enough. I'm sure I'll have lots of fun comments about the holiday traveling when I update next.

Cheers.

Broken Questions in an Old Brick Hall

What do you do when the things you’re telling her are about to make her cry? At least you deduce she is from the expression on her face, her inability to speak anything back, and the tears behind her eyes.

As you share these truths with her on a bench in the ancient brick corridor of some candy store turned bar and music hall on that forgotten street in Brooklyn, earthy strands of bluegrass meander by, squeezing between the crowds of people who carry their glasses to their seat.

What do you say when the truth about how valuable, and worthwhile, and special she is has been driven so far from her thoughts that even the fleeting glimpse of it in your words is enough to cause her normally brash facade to crack?

Would the tragedy of it all be enough to bring you to tears? Would you have the courage that I didn’t, to spill the tear, right there in front of whom ever might have passed down that hallway? What words are there, truly, for a moment that holy? How do you tell her about the one Love that won’t make her feel used, abused, objectified, lesser - that never leaves?

Is it enough that for a brief moment she brushed up against some little piece of the truth in your words? What if He tried to reach through you and touch one of His most beloved sheep, and you got in the way, only allowing a brief glimpse of His redeeming love?

Why can’t you tell her what is going on? Could she possibly come, through it all, to understand how much she is loved, that the truth she can feel in your words is only a glimpse of the impact of the full reality?

How? What? Who? Why?

Is there any hope she picked up on any of this? The answers are difficult enough to find, why must the questions be so hard to bear.

okkkkk

Clearly some of my friends can't handle me posting pictures of myself taken with work friends without turning it into something goofy, so I guess I'll have to remove those. Sorry. Oh well, Jen didn't seem too thrilled that they were up there anyway so now everyone is happy. Yay!

Mike

Oy, now that was a lot of uploading

Remind me to never take so many pictures again. I took 124 photos on Saturday, and 142 on Thursday evening. I didn’t take any at central park, though if the amount of photos taken was in proportion to the amazingness of the scene, I would have needed at least 142 if not more.

The people in these pictures are: Jen (from CeramiDC, all around great person and also our Marketing person), Seamus (IT guy from CeramiNY, also a great musician with enough stories to fill many an evening of hanging out after work), Sara Opperman (Marketing coordinator from CeramiNY, very cool), Kurt (probably spelled wrong, the guy with the shaved head who’s Sara’s boyfriend), Fil (Old Sara friend from college - I’m not entirely certain what he does for a day job but he had a killer digital camera which you can see in one or two of the shots, he was born in Latvia and moved here like…8 years ago, I’m not sure?)

The photos down to where it says “Just a Quickie” are all from Saturday at Connie Island on the board walk/pier/nathans. As usual, I haven’t done any editing save to resize them. So the contrast/brightness on some of them won’t be perfect, but it gets the pictures to you quicker and you’ll get the general idea.

The day started off at First and First a little restaurant at the intersection of 1st avenue and 1st street in Manhattan. We had breakfast there, however Seamus was thinking he would have a liquid breakfast and continued the trend to trying drink the bacon. In case anyone was curious, he was NOT successful. 

About the only thing sweeter would have been if it was open. 

Just liked the composition of this one, and the potential for nice colors. 

Is the digital camera ubiquitous enough yet? 

Some shops along the board walk. 

That's one scarry ride, I hope it's not for kids. 

Obligatory Sunset Shot 

 

Shooting pictures at sunset 

OK. The idea is you get a paintball gun and shoot at an some dude. People were having their 4 year old kids pegging the poor kid. Very odd, and a little disturbing. 

Ate at Nathans's hotdogs. I think these are the original hotdog. They've been around since like 1916 or something. Great tasting. 

 

Eating at Nathans 

 

Just A Quickie

Just a quick not to say hey and explain the photos a little better. I was in NY the second half of this week (still am actually) for a 40th anniversary party for Cerami & Associates. The pictures below are from the dinner party cruise we went on through the Hudson river, around the tip of Manhattan, up the East river around the Statue of Liberty, and back. Quite fun. So there you go.

Entry area 

It was a great meal. The salad was great, and the lasagna was excellent. Also, the hor deurvs served earlier in the evening were vegitarian sushi, several thai peanut chicken kabobs, and other scrumptious bits. 

 

Such wonderful lights. Much better than being stuck in some stuffy dinner hall for the celebration dinner. 

These last two scenes were a great way to cap off the eveninig. 

Photo Time

Got a few test photos here for you. Let me know what you think. If there is any interest in various ones, let me know. I have others from each of these "series" plus another series not represented here, Night Trees. I will be tweaking and polishing each of these so if you want a polished full size copy of one of them just send me an email and I'll see what I can do.

By the way, you know who has EXCELLENT pictures that you could probably purchase copies of if she'd post some of them? Myrinda! Excellent attention to detail in the darkroom (to the extent of perfectionism) as well as a great eye. Just ask to see her portfolio sometime; you'll be happy you did.

Anyway, enough talking about other people's pictures on to mine...

Dupont Fountain. These are a from a night photography safari I went on around the Dupont circle area Sunday evening. They are all "Full Frame, unedited shoots" for those that care. They were taken with my Canon Elph SD300 using varying long shutter settings. They were all taken at night, so the shutter lengths were on the order of 3 to 10 seconds. Fun stuff, and much easier to experiment with on a digital camera. I just bought some 100 and 800 ISO color film to try replicating some of this on my k1000 (SLR) so if you're lucky maybe soon you'll see some scanned copies of those up here. Enjoy. P.S. If you like them, leave comments and I can post more I took probably 40 pictures that night. Many are different versions of the same thing, but I have a total of about 4 "series". "Dupont Fountain" "At Dupont Fountain" "Traffic" and "Trees" 

Dupont Fountain. I realize it's washed out, but hey, I'm just experimenting. I kind of like how the trees on either side almost look like explosions of light. 

Tunnel Under Dupont Circle with Traffic 

Tunnel under Dupont Cirle 

Halloween

For anyone mildly curious, I went to a costume party (there, doesn’t that sound better than “house party”?) in New Jersey Saturday. It was right on the border of Philadelphia so I also got to eat authentic Philly cheese steak at Jim’s on 4th and South. It was awesome.

The road trip up there was great as well since I spent part of the time reading a new “periodical” I had just purchased (“Print” for those curious - good magazine) and the other part discussing the nature of Church, the condition of the church today, and the idea of fellowship/community/accountability with Malcolm and Wendell. Also, to update, I met Malcolm McGregor (Molly’s middle brother) a few weeks back at a house warming party (again, better than “house party”, right?) thrown by some people from National Community Church.

Malcolm wasn’t going to wear a costume since he claimed to despise the idea, but when I convinced him that getting in without one might be difficult he reconsidered. Thankfully. We convinced him to go as Malcolm in the Middle, a feat which was accomplished by having him wear a piece of poster board that said Malcolm on both his front and back. As an added benefit there was loads of free space for people to sign their names (or the names of their costumes).

The other guy that I went down there with, Wendell, was originally going to be an “Old School Aviator”. When I told him I wasn’t sure that a pair of jeans, a scarf, and J Lo glasses would necessarily come across as aviator - he decided to go as Lenny Kravitz. He sported only a tight white shirt, partially unbuttoned; said J Lo glasses; spikey hair; and a somewhat fashionable scarf. It doesn’t sound like dead on Lenny, but this guy already had a vaguely similar build and with the glasses it all worked alright. Oh, and not to be racist, but facts are facts, his skin tone didn’t hurt the costume either, though I don’t think Lenny is a Trini.

I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to be so I decided to put the green blazer my grandpa passed down to me to good use. I put bandana on my head, wore some torn fabric around my wrist (Nick Devine style), and put the green blazer on. The problem was that every time someone asked me what I was (yes, this happened a lot) I had to reply with the lengthy costume title, “I’m the guy who mugged the guy who just won the masters.”