Photos from Boston and Seattle...

Natalie and Goat Wii boxing

Yay, the river! (On Little Squam Lake)

My goddaughter, Sydney (and her parents, my longtime friends Jessica and Mark)

Ahhh.... memories from the Alameda House...

Would you believe we're all completely sober?

December 19

Here are half of the interns (and a staff worker's son) at my site, working at the Christmas party thrown for the kids.

Yes, I managed to mess up premade cookies. The cookie sheet was too wide so I just slanted it to put it in the oven. Didn't know they'd all migrate together. Gravity's a bitch, eh?

I told him to leave that poor horse alone, but Goat insisted on molesting putting the finishing touches on the rocking horse he built for his nephew.

Goat's mom shipped a rice krispy treat menorah from Boston for Hanukkah....

OK, so I barely made it a month, eh? Taking a photo-a-day is harder than I thought. I really like being in the habit of having my camera with me all the time though. So I'm going to keep shooting, trying to post more random "Life in LA" shots, of people I know and places I go, just easing off on the daily quota and seeing what happens.

December 3

OK, OK, beach season ended this week. I'll stop torturing you with pictures of people playing on the beach in 75-degree weather.

December 2

Anybody else hoping that plastic tag is in just hanging in the wrong section?

December 1

Plastic Camo flip flops: $45

Making fun of $45 plastic flip-flops of a similar quality to those I could get at the 99-cent store: Priceless

November 27

This is the intern room at my practicum site. Note how incredibly roomy and spacious it is with five of us in there... now imagine 9 of us (the MFT interns) trying to share two computers on work days, and 16 of us (the MFTs and the PsyD interns) trying to store our crap and check our messages on Monday when we all come in for training. Now aren't you glad you've got that whole cubicle to yourself?

November 26

Somebody give this kid an "A" for effot. And hairstyle. That's another thing about LA... parents aren't allowed to be unhip, and your kids are an extension of your hipness (btw, I may make fun of LA parents, but you know I will succumb to the pressure and have my kids listening to Vigilantes of Love and wearing Chacos before they can walk).

November 23 - Happy Thanksgiving!

Spent Thanksgiving with some frisbee friends and their coworkers... and the neighbor girls who were waiting for their dad to finish working on the roof before they ate...

November 22

So I skipped two days, so sue me. The week started out a little slow... sorry. I'm making up for it by the fact that today's pictures are of the Rolling Stones. A friend-of-a-friend worked for the tour, and gave us seats on the floor at the last minute for their show at Dodger Stadium. Midway through the show, the stage rolled out along a track, and we were about 50 feet away from Mick and Keith in the flesh! Keith Richards is a bit scary...

November 19

Our beach league team were the "Running Grunion"... O captain, our captain had these trophies made.

November 18

A spotted leopard eel (or something like that) in the eel tank at Ocean Avenue Seafood in Santa Monica. Unlike lobsters, if you order eel, this is not the one you get to eat.

November 17

Horse racing at Hollywood Park... I expected it to be a bit more like the Kentucky Derby, and I was worried I'd be underdressed in my flip-flops. Not so much.

November 16

I work with some community college students reeeeeally early in the morning, and this is my student's son with us at Starbucks, getting really bored.

November 15

I was kind of fascinated by the barbed wire outside of Phillipe's restaurant in Chinatown.

This is kind of a weird picture of Goat... we were playing random table games and this was the view I had of him while I was rooting around under the table for the quarter we dropped.

November 14

So there's sort of a nature theme going on here... but I liked the water on this leaf. Of course, it's not from rain (it hasn't rained here since, like, May or something) but they must have watered the lawn this morning.

November 13

The (very symmetrical) hallway of Fuller's prayer garden...

November 12

The beach at Santa Monica, with Malibu in the background.
Sand and sky... from my vantagepoint on the sidelines, still nursing a bad back. But my Sunday routine still includes a healthy dose of beach, so things could certainly be a lot worse.

November 11

A little shaky, but here's a shot of the Bittersweets playing in Hollywood Saturday night.

Hannah and Co. blew into town for a few hours for their first LA gig.

November 10

Ah, the endless entertainment of random bar photography.

November 9

Modern Mecca. A mere block away from my apartment, this grad student's dream is one-stop shopping for various and sundry cheap crap. Also the source of the sketchy pudding.

November 8

Evening commute: taillights on the 16-lane freeway by my apartment

November 7

Pay close attention to the manufacturer of this particular chocolate pudding...

November 6

Monday morning commute...

November 5

We had another Ugly Night Out for Freya's birthday... everyone else looked kind of hip-ugly, but Freya, brave girl that she is, went with the letter of the law... purple pantsuit and all.

November 4

I had to pick two today... they're both from being on a walk with my friend Kim in some of the nicer neighborhoods of Sierra Madre (needless to say, we were a little surprised by the pig).

November 3

Sleepy Goat, who drove out from Santa Monica to surprise me, only to discover I'd gone shopping on the way home from work and that my phone didn't get reception in Trader Joe's.

November 2

Barbie, meet JJ

November 1

My friend at the nursing home where I go to visit a hospice patient. My patient sleeps all the time now, so when I go visit, I spend most of my time with this lady, who doesn't speak a word of English, and doesn't seem to let the fact that I don't speak a word of Chinese stop us from having long, animated conversations until I have to get back to work.

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A picture may be worth 1000 words, but I'll try to keep it short in mentioning that even though I took a picture today, I've got a case study due tomorrow and that means maybe the site will get updated tomorrow or Friday...

Oooh... how about a substitute picture of my goddaughter in her halloween costume here. She's adorable... I like to think she takes after me.

October 31 - circa 1979

In honor of Halloween... here's a lo-fi shot (of the TV) of a scene from our Super-8 home movies. Getting them transferred to DVD was a birthday gift to our parents from my brother and I, but their birthdays were this summer and so it's looking like a Christmas gift now. Anyhow, the DVD arrived on Monday and I relived 1972-79 tonight.

October 30

Floating gummy bears. Well, floating in Lemon Sorbet, which you can't see because my flash went off. Gummy Goodness courtesy of Cold Stone.

October 29

The beach Ultimate time-out. Did I mention it's still 75 degrees at the beach in late October?

October 28

JJ, my downstairs neighbor

The bit where I explain myself

This is the beginning of an ambitious project for me... ambitious because I tend to live in short-attention-span theater most of the time, and the idea of taking a photo a day for a year is daunting. Daunting enough, actually, that I think I'll try it for a month and see how it goes.

The goal is to have a damn good excuse here in grad school to get my head out of my rear and start paying attention to the world around me, and to have a reason to be beholden to my camera again, which has, sadly, been sorely neglected over the past 15 months, with the odd exception of the occasional wedding to help pay the bills. But I miss seeing life that way, through a lens, framed in 35mm proportions. So, hey, I don't promise brilliant photography here but I do promise to try to dish up a bit of my LA life, and more often than not, try to find an interesting perspective on it.

If I took more than one a day, you can find 'em here, on Flickr.