New Year

Well, that's the last of a very eventful 2008. Although 2009 is already shaping up to be quite the adventure...my anticipation abounds. Also, this means the blog has been around for a full year now. I hope you've enjoyed it, despite it lacking a bit in actual substantive material.

Good times.


Here's to the balancing act we call life. Have a healthy and happy New Year everyone.

And of course, no event is complete without balancing something on my dog's head:


What a great guy. I'll never get tired of putting random crap on his head.

Happy Holidays

Have fun. Be safe. Stay warm.


Cathy actually put up decorations and the tree about a month ago when my parents were in town...


My mom lent a hand with the decorations...


Ornaments were strategically placed on the tree...


Lots of ornaments...


Finished product.

Oh, and if you haven't seen it yet:


I think Q looks like a bug.

Ring Flash

Ring flash. A ring flash is basically a circular flash around the lens. It's a one or two trick pony in my opinion so I didn't want to buy one. Instead, I made a rudimentary one this weekend using a hotshoe flash, cardboard, a garbage bag, tinfoil, duct tape, and a glue stick. For being so low tech and looking like some sort of abstract art piece gone wrong, it works pretty well:


My better half.

Winter Solstice

Not quite, but it sure feels like it with the 6 inches of snow on the ground.

I'm not sure if it's really the way I am or if it's because I'm making excuses for living in Chicago, but I need my seasons. In theory, I think I'd love to live in a mild climate. It would be ideal in so many ways. Yet at the same time, my life has a rhythm with the distinct seasons. Without them, my year would be a song with no discernable beginning or end, no ups and downs, no build up, no catharsis.

Then again, there is something to be said about being able to wear sandals 365 days in a row. I suppose that's like a year long face-melting guitar solo set on repeat.


Q. Snow. Stick.

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Taken

Garbage In, Garbage Out

You know what I've noticed? Chicago doesn't give a shit about recycling.

No real city-wide residential recycling program. Once upon a time, recycling at home consisted of placing recyclables into a blue bag and then putting said bag into your normal garbage bin. I don't even know that could be theoretically successful and needless to say, it was an utter failure from the beginning. A bin system has been recently introduced, but for some silly reason it's only in a handful of neighborhoods.


City recycling drop-off centers are scattered, hard to find, and poorly maintained. It's full because it never gets emptied, not because people are recycling a lot. Most people here just throw bottles, cans, and paper right into the trash without hesitation. I'm pulling this number soley from personal experience (i.e., my ass), but I'd say, conservatively, that 2/3 of a person's trash is either recyclable or even avoidable.

At least the park districts have recycling bins (so says the optimist in me). Still, it just seems that people around here are inescapably materialistic, yet only a minority care about conserving the resources for those materials.

Oh well.

Staaaay...

Another installment of my inspirational series, "Toy on a Labrador's Head":


Toy on Head.

lol

Plundered

Cathy's mountain bike got stolen, straight out of our garage. Fuckin thieves. I blame it on bad garage security, a cheap cable lock, and my own idiocy (I had a perfectly decent krypto I could have slapped on but I got lazy). Looks like they just cut the cable and walked away with it. So the moral of the story is people suck so keep your shit locked up.


Lioness at Lincoln Park Zoo. Shoulda had her guarding the bike.

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Dash

Post-Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was good here in Chicago. Lots of family, a couple naps, and loads of food. I mean insane amounts of it. Fun times had by all.

Btw, the first day of December and we get our first snow. Seems appropriate. Already the doors to my car are frozen shut and the windshield has a nice sheet of ice on it. I love the midwest, lol.


A couple of Cathy's desserts.


Pumpkin cheesecake pie.


Dad and dogs.

Thanksgiving

It's about that time. End of the harvest. The one day I might consider giving sweet potatoes another chance. Black Friday Eve. Turkey o'clock as we in the biz say. Thanksgiving.

My parents are coming in for the week. We'll be spending the holiday at Cathy's parents' house for a hybrid Korean/American feast. Meaning turkey served here, ggakdugi over there, maybe some stuffing in this bowl, octopus on a stick on that plate, and of course a number of desserts from Cathy.

So most people get together and become hedonists for a day, but remember it's also a day to appreciate what you have in a spiritual sense (or material, if that's what floats your boat). I think a lot of people, including me, often get carried away with all sorts of irrelevant shit. The inverse is true too, which is equally unfortunate. So kick back for a moment and take some time to reflect, to consciously put things in perspective. I do it whenever I can - and I think it helps me stay grounded in an increasingly ungrounded world.

Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Randoms:


Cathy tossing caramels. She was making a turtle cheesecake.


Taken at the Robert Sinskey Vineyard. We did some wine tasting there. As you can see, there was another tasting going on in the koi pond, lol.


Clem!

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nonsense.

Great Blue Heron

Took a walk around a random park during the summer. I ended up spending some time on a small lake watching this heron fish for food. He was pretty cautious, and took flight when I first walked to the lake (but returned a couple minutes later). He moved very slowly, peering into the water from all sorts of angles. I did my best to sneak around to avoid bothering him.


I was lucky to get this shot. I retreated from the lake to change my position and came back in a roundabout way to hide behind a tree. I waited for him to walk by so that I would be in his blind spot, but he seemed to be taking too long. I peeked around the tree just in time to see his first and only attempt at catching a fish. He snapped his head into the water, speared this bluegill, promptly ate it, and then flew away.

Holidays and TheKnot.com

Well the holiday season is almost here. I find it funny (or maybe unfortunate) how life gets busier during the holidays. Used to be the other way around, where I'd get a week or two off and basically try my best to make trouble without getting caught making it.

Also, Cathy setup a profile at the [theknot.com]. I never heard of theknot website until recently, but then again I wasn't engaged until recently either. It's nothing crazy but you can get random details about us, the wedding, and other info.

Sign the guestbook too... Let's just say someone whose name rhymes with "bathy," has been eagerly waiting for people to sign it, and thus far there is a grand total of two entries :) (thanks to Rie/Eric and a canned entry by the administrators of website, yay).

Photo unrelated.


Shrine Chapel by Orchard Lake in Michigan. The chapel wasn't consistently lit so I snuck a tripod in and took some bracketed exposures to make this composite image. You risk "flatness" to an image when you do that, but you can bring out a lot of interesting detail...

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Diminished

Election Day

I hope you voted! The future of the nation hangs in the balance! Speaking of balance...


Another in my Toy on a Labrador's Head series.

909 Dewey

I've recently started scanning some old photos.


909 Dewey. Dave and pizza boxes duct taped together.

Found These

Due to a lack of anything meaningful to say, here's an old photo from when I was learning to use an off-camera flash (which I'm honestly still not very good at since I rarely use it):


Found these one day when I went to the Warren Dunes. Part of the beach was covered with flat stones like these so I grabbed a couple, stuck em together, and now have a nice paperweight on my desk. Not that I ever need to weigh down papers or anything, but it's all good.

I'm Still Wearing Sandals

I'll say it again, I do love this weather. I'm still running in shorts, walking the dogs for extended periods of time, riding my bike to the train station, I'm still walking around in sandals, I'm still driving around with my windows rolled down, still shuffling through the dead leaves...


Glucose.

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Reputable

Yes or No

Not much going on these days except for wedding planning. Luckily, Cathy is dealing with the vast majority of it. I just have to sit there and decide whether to say "yes" or "no." I think if the wedding planning were left up to me, it would end up being about 10 people and 4 dogs on a mountain somewhere. But needless to say, that idea was rejected before I even suggested it. Oh well.

But, I'm still trying to get the dogs involved.

Photo unrelated.


Acadian Hairstreak, another one of those "bug on a daisy" photos I took way back in the summer.

Cathy's Ring

Cathy's "real" engagement ring arrived yesterday.


Although we were able to pick out and look at each component piece when designing it, it was still little difficult to imagine how it was going to look - especially since the ring itself required a couple tweaks to it.


But when I opened the box, it blew me away. The ring exceeded every expectation I had and it fit Cathy's finger perfectly. Needless to say, Cathy is ecstatic.

Quentin's Birthday

It's Quentin's 6th birthday today!

Homage to Q:


Q and Pinky. With such a large head, he usually requires a form of cushioning when he lies down.


He enjoys lying on his back too, whether it's to sleep, impress some person/dog, or to practice his breakdancing moves.


The first of my "Toy on a Labrador's Head" series. Lol.

Happy birthday Q!

Fall

Fall is by far my favorite season. The air cools down, the wind is brisk, leaves change colors, apple cider is abundant, and I can finally start wearing my hoodies again. It's a great season to get some walking and thinking done (being the season of reflection and all).

Photo unrelated.


From a visit to the Botanic Gardens.

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This week has been tough for a lot of people...

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Congregate

Home at Lodi

Wow there is a lot of shit from California, and I only posted a fraction of the photos I took. In any event, this is the last post from our trip. The day before we left, we decided to take it easy. We spent the day in nearby Sacramento and the night in Lodi. It was a nice relaxing day since we had been running around quite a bit the past couple days. Some of the photos were taken with Cathy's p&s.


Nothing too notable happened in Sacramento. Some walking around, random shopping, and banana splits at Gunther's. The place has been around for about 70 years, and they make one hell of a split.


They were promptly eaten.


We returned to Lodi, did some more errands, and eventually setup the grill for dinner.


Meat and vegetable kabobs were on the menu.


Lots of random dishes. By the way, the produce around there is a lot better than in Chicago. I've been settling for wilted greens, bruised peaches, and sub-standard tubers for too long now.


Anyway, everything turned out pretty tasty.


We also enjoyed some killers mojitos, complete with fresh mint from Eric's garden.


I was sad to go. Roland was sad to see us go.


Clem was sad too.


See ya later (Eric and his flourishing veggie garden).