Birthday Picnic by the Lake

More film work, this time Kelsey's birthday picnic. Lake Merritt > Dolores Park. Also, paper lanterns are magical. They're sort of difficult to light, but once they go, they float off into the distance, and disappear. Editing these photos was really difficult. I got way more attached to these than I usually would; maybe because I had to look at them longer (getting the distortion corrections as close as possible, curve corrections, dust spotting, etc). Also, unrelated: I'm in Dublin! It's decent here. The smells and sights and sounds of another country.

A's home opener

I've been shooting film lately, more since we arrived, and I'm getting some results I really dig. These photos are from the A's home opener; my boss, Jamie, invited us out to tailgate. There are a couple technical issues. They're a little distorted from the lens and because the film wasn't 100% flat. But I'm really happy with these.

The Move

I got back from that trip, woke up the next morning, and picked up a U-Box, which is really a glorified wooden crate. Sophia and I spent the day jigsawing all of our personal possessions that wouldn't fit in the car into the box, and then taking it to the uhaul location. We spent the night at my folks' place, and then hit the road in the morning. Shoutout to "Katie":http://katality.com/ for being there at the buttcrack of dawn to see us off with cupcakes. Then it was, as my dad said, miles and miles of nothing but miles an miles. There was a "20 mile fog bank":http://photounrelated.com/2013/05/11/getting-to-sf.html in western Oklahoma that broke up before Texas, and then smooth sailing all the way across to Flagstaff that first day. It's a lot easier to travel when you have a good companion. The hotel I remembered as being "quaint and charming":http://notuntitled.com/2012/08/04/road-problems.html from my last encounter was sort of run down and the bed was awful, but it was a bed. Woke up in the morning, had a last dose of green chili and eggs before leaving the southwest, and on to Cali. All through the central valley, the almond trees were in bloom. Finally, we made it to our SF accomos, ordered pizza, and passed out.

Karaoke and coda (scenes from a good trip part 4)

Put two of my support colleagues in a room together, away from their homes, and there will be drinking. Put three of them together and there will be at least one story to come out of it. Put them all together in one place and there will be karaoke. Add an open bar, and you'll get the supreme moment of the trip, wherein Tim Littlemore gave the most epic rendition of "Sweet Child of Mine" ever. The next day was rough. Hangovers all around. Sleep on the bus home.