Hit my critical deadline (by the skin of my teeth), got to go out in public for a business lunch for the first time in YEARS (what was that all about?!), and I passed this test, so now I get to go to my first science fiction convention in about three years.
Ending June strong!
Filed under Fandom, Photography, Travel
I think too many of us spent too much time doomscrolling today. It was easy to do, there was so much high quality doom.
So, stop it. At least for now. At least until you give yourself time to breathe, to process, to allow your blood pressure to come back down.
I’m not saying that ignorance is bliss, but at a certain point you’re like Leeloo at the end of “The Fifth Element” when she finds the encyclopedia entry for “war.” When you get to that point you’re no good to yourself, your family, or anyone else.
Instead, here are some pictures from a hike up Mount Ascutney in southern Vermont in 2009. There’s a really “funny” story about this particular hike … but it will wait for another day.
Filed under Photography, Travel
June, 2010. Such a different world it seems.
San Francisco, as seen from near the shore in Berkeley. A couple of careers ago, almost twelve years, a vastly different zeitgeist ago.
That project, that company, that career, that world, all gone. And yet not gone, all now just a little piece of the whole that makes up today’s puzzle.
No matter how much we want to know why, some days we just have to keep moving without an answer. Days like today.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Photography, Travel
It’s not Ireland (never been there) but downtown Seoul, South Korea, from May, 2012.
Thinking about the people of Seoul and South Korea today, reading about how their COVID numbers are spiking.
May we all see a better tomorrow.
Filed under Photography, Travel
September, 2006. I was in Prague for the first half of my European working trip as part of my Pepperdine MBA program.
While not a religious person (or, more precisely, as a person recovering from a religious upbringing) I’m still quite fascinated by architecture, stained glass, and the stunning cathedrals of the world.
This window was in the St. Vitus Cathedral, a part of the Prague Castle complex.
Fifteen years on, better equipment – it occurs to me that shots like these would be so much better today with a new camera with a much better sensor and much higher pixel counts, matched up with that glorious “light bucket” wide angle lens….
Yet another good reason to go back to Prague. As if I needed to create one!
Filed under Photography, Travel
This finish line crossed
The race won for the moment
Time to relax, to read, to breathe – tonight
00:43:29 at the pond’s edge, no birds to be found at the feeder
But small critters occasionally scurry by for theft
Snow falling heavily
In Venice it’s foggy at 06:43:29, traffic slow and sparse
Across the canal someone’s television has flickered all night
Odd shapes flashing, occasionally recognizable, always foreign
As sea birds and gulls flash by in the mist like specters.
Los Angeles at 21:43:29 is cool and calm, another day entirely
Longing for travel and adventures, settling for far less again, taking what’s available
Tomorrow we begin again.
Filed under Art, Paul, Photography, Travel, Writing
When it’s been a long day in the middle of a long week in the middle of a long month after several long months… Throw a dart at the photo directory!
Big surprise! I was someplace taking pictures of airplanes!
2006. McCarren Airport, Las Vegas.
Give me an airport, a camera, and a couple hours to kill before our flight, I’ll be predictable.
To be honest, 2006 must have been a weird year. I actually had to look through about a half dozen directories before I found something that didn’t give me PTSD.
Work related, a couple of jobs ago, but time and selective amnesia had erased some of those memories. Nothing too nasty – an awards ceremony, folks I hadn’t thought of in probably fifteen years, an office move.
Damn! Good things there were planes too!
Filed under Flying, Photography, Travel
It’s “suboptimal” at best to be sitting at my desk at 23:15, especially after having been here pretty much constantly, going like a demon, since about 08:15 this morning.
But if you have to make your own silver lining (and it doesn’t look like the cavalry is coming over the hill to do it for me any time soon) you can do worse than setting up the monitors on your secondary computer with this view.
On the left, the Shiodome Rail Tracks in Tokyo. (If you’re bored, try to use Google Earth to figure out exactly where the camera by matching up buildings and landmarks.) My son turned me on to this feed a while back since he was passing through there periodically. It’s very calming and the trains rumbling below are wonderful white noise.
On the right, Venice as seen from the Hotel Filu. This channel plays light classical music all the time (lots of Vivaldi, Pachelbel’s Canon in D, that sort of thing) and you can watch the boats go by. Tonight (my time) as I was working it was dawn in Venice, where the skies are clear and brisk and the sunset was wonderful!
Yes, very much places I would like to be rather than at this desk. One of these days…
Filed under Castle Willett, Photography, Travel
“[TENATIVE] Fly to Washington DC”
On the one hand, good thing that trip got cancelled! I am so up to my ass in alligators between work and the hangar and year-end and budgets and tax returns and tying up loose ends and DEATH WILL NOT RELEASE ME!
On the other hand, it’s yet another thing that I would truly, truly love to do (we were going for Worldcon in DC, but because of COVID the con has turned into a bit of a “challenge” with hotels closing and facilities in short supply and moving from August to December) that I can’t because of COVID in part, but also because there’s that whole “adult” thing to deal with.
I’ll carry on. I’ll live. But there might be moments in the next week when I’m seeing reports from the convention and friends who DID make it there when I’ll be cranky.
On the gripping hand, when one door closes, another opens. One event that got written off when we were planning on being in DC this week suddenly became a possibility. And with the kids coming down…
Okay, I’ll be a tiny little bit less cranky.
No sure quite how “random,” but the truth is I wasn’t even looking for a photo necessarily, and in particular I wasn’t looking for something to use in a “random old photo” post. But I was punching buttons at random-ish on my iPhone, looking for inspiration, and at some point hit something referring to “Your Memories” and it came up with a set of photos from exactly fifteen years ago, September 28, 2006.
Antwerp. I was there with a group of my Pepperdine MBA classmates for the next to last day of our foreign tour to Prague and Brussels. We had traveled to Antwerp by bus (I remember having been up waaaaaay too late the night before and gotten up way too early that morning), had two meetings that were part of our MBA curriculum, had lunch next to the harbor, and then had about an hour to wander around town.
I walked down to the town square and the cathedral, camera in hand of course.
It’s funny what you remember. Just on the right past the crosswalk was a little pharmacy. By this point in the trip I had massive blisters and wanted to find some Band-Aids and something to kill the pain. The very nice woman in the store spoke no English, I spoke no Dutch, but we figured it out. Curiously, I still have a couple of those Band-Aids, or at least I did the last time I looked.
Not the oddest souvenir I’ve ever brought home, but a contender for the short list.
Fifteen years. It actually turned out to be a melancholy memory. About half of the photos were of classmates, at lunch, in town, on the bus, at dinner afterwards… We’ve gone our separate ways. I still see one or two on FaceBook every now and then and there are a few Christmas cards that get swapped, but that’s it. And I have no idea when I’ll see Europe again. Or if…
Filed under Photography, Travel
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