my life, as far as i know.

part of living in an industrial part of a major city is seeing lots of trash everywhere.

yesterday on my way home from work, i caught a glimpse of what looked like a piece of 4×5 sheet film. i stopped and looked at it. it looked roughly 4″ by 5″ and, sure enough, it had the code notches on one of the short sides. was this really 4×5 sheet film on the sidewalk?

i picked it up in astonishment. it was really dirty and i probably shouldn’t have touched it. indeed, it was a piece of sheet film just laying on the sidewalk. how had it gotten there? how many other people recognized it? (not many, i bet)

i thought about it, dropped the sheet, and continued on my way home.

today after work i attended an opening reception for a show called lost art. the idea is they find interesting vintage art. they find the original artist, learn more about them, and dig up more of their words for a set. tonight the show was 3 newly discovered artists from the 20s and 30s. the show was small but interesting. i was getting really warm, with my jacket, backpack, and camera so i didn’t stay long. but it was nice to get out and do something a little different.

the reception was at m.a.c., where my neighbor kelvin works.

today i was in a coffee shop that has free wifi. i noticed other people’s music shared in itunes, so i decided to change my share name to my email address. an hour or so into my stay there, i get an email:

you have very interesting taste in music. very nice, very eclectic. :-) happy sunday and thanks for sharing.

it was a great little note to get. i emailed back, explaining to him what i’ve been listening to most (YMO and Sakamoto). my friend of the moment wrote back, identifying which music he was listening to (a korean group doing jazz style covers).

I’ve been enjoying whomever’s singing on “Back To The Soul Flight”. I’m a singer myself and enjoy a lot of Japanese singers. One of my favorite ballad singers is from old school I guess….Keizo Nakanishi ;-) Hope that doesn’t date me. ;-)

i’ve been reading h. mcleod’s how to be creative. he’s a blog guy and his article was featured in the latest lenswork. it has some good things to think about. i think i agree with his “sex and cash” theory. i’m hoping the article changes my attitude about creative lulls.

wednesday: catching up with nick
thursday: indian pizza and hedwig
friday: grease the musical
saturday: dinner with boman
sunday: kalvin’s birthday party

in two weeks we move.

last night boman came over for dinner. the menu formed while we shopped at the grocery store. it turned into: cooked radish with radish greens.. orange, watercress, and parsely salad.. and spicy fried beef over angel hair pasta with poblano sauce. we enjoyed the food with one of my favorite zins — storybook mountain’s 2001 zinfandel, napa valley, estate reserve. i’m so lucky to have an excellent cook as a best friend!

tonight i was able to closely emulate a yummy sauce i had at a restaurant. the fine folks at picaro’s in the mission district serve up a fine spicy sauce with their bread. it must have been aioli* with chipotle in it.

when i was shopping for dinner, i picked up a packet of chipotle mix, some eggs, and a bulb of garlic. i followed a recipe for aioli, but instead of pepper, i added the chipotle mix to taste. oooh, it came out so well. yummy.

* chile, dried onion, dried garlic, sugar, salt.

tonight i redid the templates and style sheets for my official blog. watching my small machine rebuild 527 entries inspired me to tune-up the database server a bit to grab more memory for buffers and cache. my blog now matches the main page of my home page.

do we love without thinking?

— ryuichi sakamoto, “war and peace”

decided to photography these great flowers boman gave us last night. it took a couple polaroids until i found the framing and focus that i wanted. this ended up being near range, full bellows, f/16 on a nikkor 210mm. hand triggered 2 seconds of exposure. it’s too bad, i couldn’t get the digital camera to meter this print well enough to accurately capture the tones. so this will have to do.

a week and change ago i went back to indiana for family stuff. my cousin nathan got married.

some things have changed. my aunt and uncle and grandparents are all moving. my cousin’s teenage years were spent in the house in edgewood, indiana. my grandparents (who now have both a computer and email account, and a cell phone) are moving to be closer to family but will spent winter months back in tucson. also, i’m now the only grandchild in the family left unmarried. :-/

some things haven’t changed. nathan’s highschool friends are all married, but they’re still all punks and goofs. some of them remembered me and my little brother, even though we haven’t really seen everybody in at least a decade. nathan’s biological father, bill, was there and he hardly recognized us. especially since tom’s grown many feet in height.

i had some time to myself in our nice hotel. i spent a little time with my brother and his wife (though not enough). i spent a good amount of time with everybody in the family. unfortunately, i didn’t have any time to spend with my own indiana friends (matt and jeff+jessica). maybe next time.

some things will change. our family tree will spread out. my cousin mary’s adorable daughter will soon be older than i remember being (when mary used to make me and tom attend her “school” classroom in her bedroom and assign us homework.)

some things won’t change. i will always be cousin jason, brother, stuart and mary’s first born, the boy who used to pen-pal write his second cousin from kentucky, and the grandson who frequently spoke spanish with my grandmother when he was little.