Shooting from the hip, flying by night, whatever you want to call it. That’s what I have been up to. Actually it would have been nice if there would have been a little more flying by night going on over the past few days. We have been trying to get Reagan on a plane so that she can go visit some family before she starts her new job. Unfortunately, snow happened. Because of all of the craziness, I have been canceling, rescheduling, then canceling just about everything on my calendar, since Monday. Reagan is booked again for a flight leaving tomorrow afternoon. Let’s hope that the stars align for this one, because I’m not sure if either of our nerves could handle a repeat of yesterday.

A few things that I did manage to accomplish:

1. I bought Reagan a new camera in anticipation of her voyage. It is a compact. She likes ones that she can take around with her in her purse. It is a pretty good one. I was tempted to just get her a G12, because I’m so loyal to Canon. Instead, I ultimately ended up going with a Samsung TL500, which also shoots RAW, was $100 more affordable, and has a Shneidler lens (that opens to f/1:1.8). I hope it works out for her.

2. I updated my Linux operating system. About a year ago I put together a little Linux box running on Ubuntu, so that I could back up all of my images. After I got all of the drives installed and setup the OS, I haven’t even had it hooked up to a monitor. The only times I have had to restart it, is when the power went out (when Reagan blew a breaker with her blowdryer). Everything is running swimmingly. I just unloaded about 300 GBs of images onto a brand new virgin drive on the Linux machine overnight. So, that is my plug for open source everything.

That’s about it. The image at the top is just a cropped screenshot of myGMail inbox. Do you ever have those moments where there is so much going on in your brain simlutaneously, that you just kind of short circuit and everything becomes abstract? I was having one of those moments when I made the screengrab.

It has been kind of a crazy string of days, since I last posted anything on JNB. First of all: credit where credit is due. Reagan snapped the above photo of me bowling. It is quite possibly one of my favorite photos that has ever been taken of me.

Now, rewind to Wednesday night.  Reagan and I ordered sushi from the same place that we always do (2-3 nights per week). It took a lot longer to arrive than normal, and it was all disheveled.  The rolls were falling apart in the chopsticks, etc.. I don’t know if that even had anything to do with anything. But Thursday morning, I felt like I was dying a slow death. And I’m guessing that it was something from the sushi that was doing the killing. Reagan had a bit of an upset stomach, too. But hers appeared to be a bit more manageable.

I wasted most of the day in bed trying to recover. We were planning on leaving that night to visit my sister  and her family in VA. Because of various items that came up and committed me to being in NYC on Friday morning, we ended up not leaving until around Noon on Friday. I was loading the car right as a blizzard was reaching it’s crux over the island of Manhattan. Luckily, once we were over the GW, the accumulation was minimal.

We arrived at the home of my B-I-L’s father early Friday evening, and spent the rest of the weekend having one blast after another. I wanted to get some fun portraits of my sister’s family. Unfortunately, in my haste to get out the door, I left two of  my favorite lenses at home. Also, let’s be real, I’m not much of a portrait photographer. We still shot a ton of photos, though.

Here is a shot of my little nieces having a jumping contest:

Then of course, Reagan played salon with the girls.

My nieces took turns playing assistant and client.

Let’s not forget the shoot that we did in the library, where Reagan directed (inspired by several 80′s era wedding announcements, and other awesome stuff). All of the images looked totally natural, and not contrived, at all. An example:

We rounded off the visit with a trip to Broadview Lanes. It was the first time that both of my little nieces had ever bowled. They clearly take after their second-cousin Ted Swenson, in the sense that they were total naturals.

To finish off this never-ending post: a shot of Reagan, lining up a strike.

Let’s start with the part about being over the hump.  It is Wednesday (a.k.a. humpday). But this week, today is the equivalent of Thursday, since we are driving to VA on Friday instead of going to work. My sister and her family are on the east coast visiting my sister’s father-in-law and family. Since they live in Alaska (my sister’s fam), we can’t pass up an opportunity to visit them when they are within driving distance. I’m all kinds of excited about seeing them.

Next: Last night I shot some kind of stuff for a fun little editorial that I’m working on for SoJones. It is more stuff from our same designer friend who made the dress in Reagan’s bodega photos. Our friends (the Adams) were kind enough to be my go-to models again. It is especially important to mention what good sports they were about standing out in the cold while I fought with finicky strobes (notice the inconsistent lighting in the photos). Hopefully it will be the last time I have to deal with Canon’s line-of-sight IR triggers. I think that I’m going to use some “Christmas money” to buy a new pocket wizard setup before we go to VA.

And… one more

I don’t think that any of my analysis of Bob Marley would be of any value to anyone. He is certainly one of my all time favorites. This is one of my favorite tracks. “I’m hurting inside.” I think that it has a pretty powerful message. If happiness doesn’t come, “I’m gonna go lookin.” Spin it.

[photo: someone who was lucky enough to be nearby Bob Marley while he was alive and smiling]

(photo I posted it because I was archiving last year’s stuff, and I came across it. It has nothing to do with this post, except for the fact that breakdancing is still awesome in 2011)

I have been thinking pretty long and hard about some resolutions for this year. The only ones that were coming quickly to mind were jokes. Like: Resolved, I’m going to get as fat as possible in 2011. That way, if I don’t achieve my goal, I’m stoked, because I won’t be fat. If I do get as fat as possible, I could say that I finally kept my resolution.

Then I started coming up with things like “demonstrate more patience.” How in the world can something like that be quantified, though? I mean, do I keep tally marks from month to month for each time I catch myself groaning about someone’s (possibly my own)  incompetence– then if December has less tally marks than January, I succeeded? What if I encounter more incompetence in January than in December?

Finally, it dawned on me. I have fallen out of some pretty good habits, and into some less than good ones. Reversing those items will be a win-win. Instead of grinding away with the tally marks all year long, I can knock out all of the hard work in just a few months, while I force myself to get back on track. After that I can coast through the rest of the year by just doing maintenance while I reap the benefits. So, down to brass tacks:

1. Get more rest. During the winter it is so easy to just get sucked into all night projects. I mean, it is dark for more than half of the time that I’m awake each day. I have fallen into the habit of burning away the night working on projects that I invent for myself. Then I wake up feeling like crap. After a few days, my productivity starts to wane and I eventually just have to waste half of a weekend catching up on sleep. This is not only totally unproductive, but it also pisses off Reagan.. bad.
2. Stop eating just to break up the monotony. Even when I was burning through 90000000 calories a day by running, I only ate one meal per day. Partly because it was all I had time for. Partly because that was the only time that I was really hungry. In reality, I’m still only hungry once per day. But I have fallen into a stupid habit of eating just for an excuse to get away from my desk. I find myself eating second dinner at times.
3. Stop spreading myself too thin. Sometimes I will overbook myself, because I have a hard time saying no. Sometimes I can pull it off. Most of the time, at least one job ends up suffering. I think that if I slow down enough to devote my whole attention to whatever I’m working on, the results will definitely reflect it.
4. Start running again. Hi, I used to be a runner. Then the temperature dropped and it was dark a lot, so I stopped. Completely. Reagan got me a Garmin 410 for Christmas that is still sitting safely in it’s packaging. Starting this week, I’m going to run at least once per week until I can catch the fever again and dive back in headlong (probably when the temps start getting above 50, again).
5. Start shaving. I just threw that one in because it will be so easy, hahahaha. Sorry Mr. Beardo (and Reagan). It’s the end of the beard as we know it.

And, that is kind of a lot to tackle. But, here we go. Hold me accountable, amigos.

I guess that the pressure to start of the year with a golden uplifting post is now gone, since I dropped that depressing bomb of a story about the car problems. But, here is some material to try to liven things a bit. Above: photos we took of each of us on New Year’s day. Reagan posted a variation of this combo on her blog. So, sorry if this is repeat material. Below is a blurry gem from the blackberry cam, of Reagan pouring sparkling cider for the midnight runners (the New York City ones, not the Dexie’s variety).

Aaaaand, here we are on our way back from dinner, on New Year’s day.

We had a great visit with Piper on Sunday. On our way home, the entire Hudson River was covered in fog.  I know that these kind of shots are a dime a dozen in San Francisco, but we don’t get them as often in NYC.

Finally, here is a little vid of Piper swinging and lauging in the New Year–

(Above photo of Greta is for reference only, it was not taken during the incident described below)

I have been putting off writing anything because I feel like the first post of the year is such a big deal. But, here it is, January second (almost Jan. 3rd), and I really don’t have anything that amazing to share. In fact, if anything, this year has been a bit of a stresser already. So here is a big fat long story. I don’t do this often, but I don’t currently retain a therapist, so I’m just going to spill it all right here.

Our new year’s eve activity was pretty cool. We  handed out sparkling cider in Central Park during the midnight run. New Year’s day got off to a bit of a rough start. We woke up and walked to the car, so that we could go visit Piper and the battery was dead. Whoops! Some idiota (me) left the lights on the day before and completely killed Greta. There was a dude getting into a car (a 2010 BMW 328i) parked about 3 cars back, who I walked back and asked if he wouldn’t mind giving us a jump. He said that he would, but it wasn’t his car, European cars are temperamental, etc.. After which, he politely declined. A few minutes later he (I will refer to him as the “bimmer dude” from here on) pulled up and opened the trunk (that is where batteries are located on most BMW’s), and was like “you got wires, man?” I informed him that I did, and proceeded to crawl through the back seat of our car, into the trunk (the trunk won’t open when the batter is dead), and pulled out our jumper cables. This is where things got bad.

The bimmer dude was on the sidewalk, on his phone. I was hooking up the cables, when his family came out and started observing/remarking on the situation. They were totally cool and nice second generation Russians. Reagan was in our car. I told her to try to start it. Suddenly, the bimmer was no longer running. It was deader than dead. The electrical system was clearly fried. I mean, at the very least, it was the main fuse and possibly some relays. So, the bimmer dude, hiding his frustration well, got back into his car and tried in vain to start it. Not only was the bimmer failing to start, the instrument panel would not light up, and the key was locked into the ignition. Meanwhile, I’m starting to feeling like complete rubbish. I decided to send Reagan back to our apartment to fetch some band aids for my bleeding hand, which I had managed to slice open somewhere in the mix. It turns out that bimmer dude and family had an uncle in Yonkers who was on his was to try to remedy the situation. Meanwhile, everyone over 18 in bimmer dude’s camp, was trying to chain smoke away all of their anxiety. It turns out that the bimmer is zip car that the kind Russians had rented for the day to drive to Jersey and visit some family before they returned to TX. This only made be feel like more of a douche-a-tard.

About now, awesome euro-uncle shows up in an Audi S-8 with family in the back seat. I’m totally perving on his car, big time. His car was so great that I almost got distracted from the awful situation that I had caused by leaving Greta’s lights on.  Even though I’m absolutely convinced that the bimmer issue is fuse/relay related, the people at zip-car said that their low jack computer indicated that the bimmer only needed to be jumped. So euro-uncle positioned his gorgeous S-8 in front of the bimmer, where he could connect the cables. Of course this solved nothing. Still no instrument lights or anything. The Russian mom suggested that since euro-uncle was there anyway, he might as well give it another shot jumping Greta– which they did. This time it was successful. So now, Reagan is sitting in the passenger seat of Greta, with the butt warmers blazing, battery safely charging off of Greta’s cute little Bosch alternator. Meanwhile, bimmer is still sitting in the middle of the road, windows open, deader than dead.

At this point, I was furiously googling the location of the main fuse block for 2010 328i’s, while bimmer dude was exchanging heated words with the zip car rep, on the phone (intermittently parsed by bursts of Russian [also heated] between bimmer dude and euro-uncle). I was about ready to just hand over the keys to Greata, along with my checkbook, at this point. Partially because I felt so horribly bad, and partially because I felt like I was about to have a hit out on me, by the Russian mafia. So, I decided to compliment euro-uncle on his super-nice whip. He smiled from ear to ear, was was like “Kom. Leyt me show you engine.” Then he popped the hood and we both admired the beautifully crafted work of German engineering that was purring away in front of us. But this glorious moment was heavily tainted by the fact that bimmer dude was still arguing on the phone with zip car/chain smoking, and that the bimmer was still just a large silver brick blocking the road.

I mean, I was trying to help. I had located and pulled the cover off of the main fuse block on the bimmer. But I was starting to feel like my presence (along with Reagan and Greta’s) was only exacerbating the situation. So, I told bimmer dude that I felt like complete [poop] about the situation and asked him if he wanted me to stick around, or if there was anything that he thought I could do to help. He was on hold with zip car at the moment. He told me that I should get going, but to leave the cables with him. I gladly handed over the cables. I stepped into Greta and maneuvered her over onto the sidewalk, to the closest corner (the dead bimmer was blocking us into our parallel parking spot from the street side). The minor quid pro quo of handing off the cables to bimmer dude was not soothing the sick feeling I had inside about ruining the day of an entire family, after they were trying to do us a solid by jumping Greta.

I was on autopilot the whole way to See Piper. I had an ok visit with her. When we returned home in the evening, the dead bimmer was still sitting there, now abandonned in the road.. windows open glaring at me. I mean, I guess I need to just let it go. But, I’m still kind of feeling like crap about it. I just hope that something seriously– seriously good happens to that awesome Russian family who got totally screwed over on New Year’s day 2011 for trying to be nice and lend a hand. I’m trying to take comfort in the fact that it was a zip car. And I and hope to heaven that those Russian good Samaritans won’t have to pay a dime out of their own pockets.

So that is my really long, and kind of depressing story about how I rang in the new year.