I don’t mean to brag, but, in my very biased opinion, I seriously have some of the cutest  nieces and nephews on the planet. It is basically blowing my mind that two of them have now grown enough to start school. Here are some adorable recent shots of them.

Maya off to her first day of school in Ketchikan Alaska. Beyond cute–

I seriously love that her backpack is as big as she is. Flawless first day of school outfit, right down to the ruby slippers.

And here is my little nephew Kelton. I’m not going to say these are cute (because I don’t want to risk taking a samurai sword to the knee caps next time I see the guy), but he is a handsome little kindergartner.

Serious props on the hairstyle (he chose it himself). His teacher is going to smell trouble in the air from a mile away with this little guy.  Hahahah.

It is amazing how hard it is for me to get my haircut, seeing that I live with a stylist/barber extraordinaire. Anyway, after 2 or more weeks looking like Chewbacca and wearing hats on the weekends I was finally able to regain my clean-cut image. That, and several other things made last weekend a pretty good one.

We had a blast doing these shots of Reagy on the roof, for an eye wear co. I’m not sure if I will be able to use any of the shots from this set, but I liked how they came out. Reagan is such a cutie (and a good sport).

One more-

Reagan and I had Piper outside again on Sunday. This was probably our most lengthy outdoor excursion, so far. It was still a bit bright for Piper, but we had her in the shade, and she seemed to acclimatize after several minutes. Occasionally she would look up, only to look straight back at the ground and cover her eyes with both hands. So Cute. Reagan snapped a couple of shots of (pre-haircut) me and Piper hanging out.

Part of it is the white balance, but doesn’t Piper look like a zoned out little porcelain doll, below?

We capped off the weekend by watching one of my favorite sleep over movies from when I was a kid– Tron. I forgot how awesome/nerdy that movie is. What was even better, is that we watched it with a bunch of our friends while eating some super-delicious cookies.

Can you believe that this week is already September? I’m in denial.

Since Reagan and I both chose to have a lazy morning, instead of getting up really early and hitting the trail. We had to opt out of Governor’s Island, today. But we still had plenty of time to hang out with Piper. She had just woken up when we arrived. So she was in the mood to play, but not super smiley, yet. It takes her a few hours to warm up into chipper self, when she wakes up from a nap. Above, she is getting some good snuggle time with Reagan, and of course, the monkey card. Below, she is actively engaged in “A Bargain for Francis,” By kicking the page, as Reagan reads to her.

When my alarm went off this morning, it was pouring outside. So, I didn’t get up and run. I only have 5 miles scheduled for today, so hopefully I will be able to sneak them in this evening. It looks like I’m going to have to have to get wet at some point this week, though. I just checked the forecast and apparently it is going to be raining until Thursday.

Yesterday evening shaped up nicely. We did a couple of videos for Reagan, then shot some stills (also for R’s hair blog) on the roof with umbrellas. Just when I had resigned to being a homebody for the day, I received a text from some of our friends to hang out at their place. We had a blast hanging out with them and eating some delicious food together. They live about a mile and a half up Broadway from us. Since we had the dog with us, we had to make the journey on foot. MTA doesn’t allow dogs, unless they are in a carrier. Plus, we learned the hard way that the little guy gets car-sick pretty easily.  So, all three of us had a really fun night-walk through the park in the rain, on the way home.

I was able to kick off the week shooting the second phase of this really cool installation at the roof garden of the Met, for Curatedmag. It was really cool to A. be in the Met when it is not open, and B. have that exclusive view from 40 above the deck of the roof garden. More, over here.

Now, we turn to overcomma-fication. A while back (over a year ago), I decided that I was going to start using less commas. Yes, I feel like legal writing has pretty much tainted my writing style forever. I know that I destroy all of my sentences with the way that I punctuate the crap out of them. But the funny part is that I was apparently anonymously called out on it, yesterday. Reagan had this bright idea of putting an anonymous submission form on her blob. She had it posted for like 20 seconds, and one of the first questions she received included this: “can you please teach jake how to use commas? his blog would be so good, but he is comma happy.”

Hahahahah. Sorry, anon. If it is any consolation, I haven’t been able to stop saying “awesome” either (which was another item of things to correct, in the list that I linked to above). Here is an (redacted) example of the insanely long run-on sentences that I have to deal with on a daily basis:

MEZZANINE C CASH MANAGEMENT AGREEMENT (this “Agreement”), dated as of June XXXXXXXX, among XXXXXXX, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company (“Borrower”), having an address at XXXXX Street, XXXXX, Maui, Hawaii XXXXX; XXXXXXX BANK, N.A., a national banking association, having an address at XXXXXXX Road, Suite XXXX, XXXXXXX, California [zip] (“Agent”); and XXXXXXXXXX INC., a Delaware corporation, having an address at XXXXXXXXXXX, New York, New York [zip] (“Lender”).

You get the idea. After seeing that many commas in every sentence that I read at work, I must subconsciously feel like I’m not using enough of them, or something. I have pretty much been ruined. I think that part of it is the way that I haphazardly string my sentences together. It’s not that I don’t know what normal punctuation looks like, either. I read massive amounts of newspapers and magazines. What’s worse, is that when I’m proofreading a post, I will go through removing commas and it still ends up with way too many. I’m am so obsessed about it, that at one point I actually dug up some of my old articles from college, to see if I had the same issue back then. I didn’t. It really is something that has only started to plague me since law school.

So, anon, there, you, have, it. I don’t blame you if you can’t get past the commas, the “hahaha”s and the “awesome”s. But, at least you know I’m working on it, right? Hehe

^—closely studying her favorite monkey birthday card.

^—-being tickled

^—-goofing off outside. She enjoyed it much more today, since it was overcast, and she didn’t have sunscreen in her eyes.

Click through here, for a few more.

Don’t you love those weeks where you are so busy that they just fly past and before you even realize it, they are over? I love those weeks (but I hate when that happens on vacation). I have been too busy to even shave (see above). The shot above is perfect evidence of why I should spend my time behind the camera, not in front of it, hahaha. A guy that I was working at an event with, on Wednesday night, grabbed my camera and snapped one of me. I have seriously never felt less attractive, than I have in the couple of weeks. My tan is faded, I need a haircut, my skin is breaking out and I have bags under my eyes. Not a great combo.

Jessica White (below), on the other hand, was looking fabulous, that night. Ms. White was hosting the runway show Wednesday night. Can you believe that everyone is already starting to ramp up for fall fashion week? It is kind of exciting, because I love fashion week. But, it is kind of depressing, since that means that summer is basically done.

I dropped by PS11, again today, for Highsnob and had another great chat with my favorite Brazilian artists. Below is a shot of the finished piece, with Otavio shooting hoops in the foreground.

Thursday night, it was raining, so I didn’t run. No running today either. 14 miles tomorrow, it should be interesting, after so much time off.

I’m definitely looking forward to spending some time with Piper this weekend. Reagan and I have some pretty fun stuff planned, too.

To wrap things up– Ang tipped me off to an error that was happening in IE browsers when she was trying to comment. So, thanks for helping me troubleshoot, Ang. Also, my apologies to the other thousands, actually probably millions (hahahahaha) of people who have been experiencing the same frustrating problem while attempting to comment.

I hope that everyone has a fantastic weekend.

Tuesday, I dropped back by the piece that Os Gemeos are working on. This time, I was able to chat with Gustavo (above) for a while in Portuguese. I can’t tel you how great it was to chat with a Brazilian that has a proper Paulista accent (not to mention that it was cool to chat with him regardless dialect). He said that they are going to try to wrap this piece up by the end of the week. So, I’ll be back by there, probably tomorrow to shoot the finished product. The image below shows the progress, as of Tuesday afternoon (Moody Blues, anyone?).

I’m still not feeling 100%, but I can’t really take much more of a break from running, and expect to stay sane. If it isn’t raining tonight, I plan to resume with the training sched.. I’m a bit nervous, after taking a full week off. Thankfully my long run, slated for Saturday is only 14 miles. I will have a week to get back into the groove (Madonna, anyone?), before my 20 mile run next weekend.

The part that I’m really looking forward to, about the next two long runs, is that Summer Streets is currently in full effect. So, instead of doing my usual out-and-back down the Hudson River path, I can do Park Avenue, instead. Should be a blast, and a much welcomed change of scenery.

But, the biggest thing on my mind/load off of my mind, is that all of the nerd-stuff that I have been chipping away at for the last week and a half is finally resolved. Everything is now back in a relatively maintenance free stasis (fingers-crossed). I feel like I can finally get back to real life, and it isn’t a day too soon, because I am super behind on EVERYTHING.

Piper did remember, today. Phew! She was in a great mood when we arrived. I feel like she is getting better and better at walking. She has to hold on to stuff, but I think that she enjoys being mobile on her feet. Today she kept making the rounds between me, Reagan and the bottom of her crib. She would take stuff out, put it back, then come over and sit on my lap to play with whatever she had found under her crib.

One of Piper’s favorite things, lately is when we lay on the ground. She basically mauls us the same way that a puppy would. Except instead of licking, she just gets cozy by laying her head on our face, or sitting on our head.

Ultimately, she got tuckered out and came over for her favorite nap spot– me. She snored and sqeaked in her sleep a little bit, until we tucked her in and headed out.

Here are a few more from our visit, today.

After our visit, we headed home for a quick nap, then I headed down to the Altman, to shoot a B-boy battle. It was ridiculous. I felt like I was in 4th grade again, watching Turbo and Ozone for the first time. Here are a couple of my faves:

(above: More leftovers from Charleston. For extra kicks, peep the full res image)

I’m going a bit stir crazy with this cold that I developed over the weekend. The weather, since we have been back in NYC has been ideal summer running weather and I haven’t been able to take advantage. It’s kind of putting me on edge. It has been intensified by the fact that my subway-read, this week has been “Born to Run.” Thanks for that, Becca and Carl. I’m really enjoying it (except for the part where they trash talk Dean Karnazes).

It has been a relatively slow week at work, which is always nice to come back to, after some leisure time. All of the down time has allowed me to try my hand at a little bit of video editing. When we were in SC, we shot some video for Reagan’s hair blog. I have always been a bit too self conscious to try and actually create some sort of video production, aside from the occasional tongue-in-cheek time lapse. Anyway, I put together a little tutorial of Reagan styling hair. You can check it out over here. I have to say that I wasn’t completely disappointed, given my sub-par editing software, and the fact that it was my first crack at it. More importantly, Reagan was pleased with it.

Speaking of videos– I saw this thing over the weekend, and loved it. The commentary is a bit lame. But the tarp surfing, is excellent. It reminds me of some of the sports that we used to come up with as kids, to stay un-bored. I kind of wish that we would have thought of this one. My favorite part is when the dude gets a tow-in from the dog.  I also like that they are skating the Santa Cruz LB that I was perving on, in March. Must…. get…. well…