Yes yes. How many times have I thrown up photos like this one before? Right? As I mentioned earlier this week, my Nike Plus sportband died on me, again. This is the third time it has happened. My cousin Liz suggested that I just abandon the sportband and go with the Garmin. I am almost to that point. I probably would have done just that, if it weren’t for the ever smooth and adept Nike customer service team. That, and the super cool staff at the running store in my building. I called Nike, who quickly trouble shot my watch with me and determined that it was a dud. They suggested that I try returning it where I bought it, before  sending it back to Nike. So I called Urban Athletics, who told me they would trade it straight across, for a new one. So, here we go. Sportband number 4 (pictured above). Treat me right, baby.

Switching gears completely, Reagan and I will be flying out west tomorrow. We have not been to the land of Deseret (yes that is Deseret, not desert), also know as the beehive state, since 2008 for my sister’s wedding. Since that time, one nephew and two nieces have joined the family. We have not met any of them yet. So, we have been anticipating this visit for quite a while.

Reagan and I were having a lot of anxiety about being able to go, because of Piper’s condition. But, it seems like she is on a pretty good plane, at the moment. God willing, things will continue that way, at least until we can return. Additionally, some of our amazing friends have agreed to take care of our car. Our lovely friends, the Alaska/Hofstra missies will be keeping an eye on our pad for us.

We will be taking a notebook computer with us (mostly so Reagan can play the cake building game). But I’m not sure how much posting we will get done over the next week. So, if it tends to be sparse, that is the reason.

Last night was a Karen Sabag runway show at the Altman Building in Chelsea. The venue was awesome. The ceiling in their event space is made of paver brick, which I loved. I was able to shoot the backstage, as well as the runway show. No CF card malfunctions Wednesday night. But there was a problem with the lights. Which was a bummer, because in contrast to the iFashion show, Tuesday night, Sabag, was actually properly lit. Luckily, they resolved it, after a few minutes. I was freaking out digging for my flash, for a sec. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Catch more coverage from the Sabag show on shotbyjake.com.

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Last night was the iFashion runway show, featuring 3 emerging designers. I was shooting back stage, as well as the actual show. It was a lot of fun. Although, I was totally punked by one of my CF cards which failed when I as trying to retrieve the images from it. I lost about 300 of the images from the headliner’s portion of the show (and the ones that I was the most excited about). When I realized that the card was corrupted, I almost had a heart attack. All in all, I still came away with some OK, stuff. Stupid technology. Sorry that there are so many photos in this post, and I know that the watermark is annoying. Here they are anyway.

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One more show tonight. Fingers crossed for no technological malfunction.

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It has been snowing all day. As usual, the local media totally hyped it, beforehand. Yesterday, NYC public schools preemptively canceled class for today. In fairness, it has been coming down pretty hard, all day, and is still coming down. Even though Reagan and I both had to work, we were both able to leave a lot earlier than normal. I wish that we could have had the whole day off, to be out and about, like our friends Kim and Ryan.  I did get a few snaps of my own, today, mostly on the way out of work.

^—Looking at Battery Park City, from 1 WFC.

^—-1 World Trade Center from the Vesey Street Bridge.

And my favorite, the ever timely snow-heart that someone made on our sidewalk.

I shot all of these on my way out of work last night.

^—–Ice flowing out to the harbor.

^——WFC Water Taxi Terminal

^——Random Police Barricade, recently installed next to 7 WTC

^——Looking at Jersey City from North Cove Marina

After the blizzard from this morning blew over, it ended up being kind of a beautiful sunny day. I loved the way that the sunset was lighting up the clouds, and decided to get a couple of shots, since I had my cam with me. I decided to take a stroll down to the promenade and get some shots from water-level, since the last few sunset pics that I have taken, have been through dirty windows. I thought that it would be a good chance to get some sharp images. But, since wind was blowing about 1 million miles per hour, sea spray was blowing up all over the front of the lens. Oh well, I was pretty happy about the way these shots came out.

Since Piper has been back at Columbia, I have been back to the old car moving routine. I have not enjoyed it. I normally get up at 6, so that I can get it done before there is any real traffic. The sweet spot is between 6 and 7. After 7, there is a garbage truck and a school bus blocking every single street in our neighborhood.

This morning, Reagan woke me up, while she was stirring around. I had one of those sudden moments of panic, like I knew I shouldn’t still be asleep. I had forgotten to take my phone off of silent, and the type of alarm that I had set for moving the car, doesn’t make any noise, when my phone is on silent. It was already 7. I got down stairs just in time for the blizzard to start, and in time to get stuck behind every school bus and garbage truck in our neighborhood, at least once. Hahahaha. I’m ok with that though, because the snow was very pretty and entertaining to watch, while taking breaks from watching the dudes toss garbage into the truck.

At long last, I did find a parking spot in time to make it down to work w/o being late, where I took the above photos of the storm. I know they are kind of boring. I liked these ones much more.

To add a little bit of contrast to the gray photos above, I thought I would post the image below. It has made its way around the internet by now, but I thought it was cool enough to share again anyway.

The image comes from artist Steven Worley’s blog. In his post, he outlines the history of Crayola’s color spectrum, and how the palette has expanded over the years, saying:

Crayola’s crayon chronology tracks their standard box, from its humble eight color beginnings in 1903 to the present day’s 120-count lineup.  According to Crayola, of the precious crayons of my childhood – the seventy-two colors from the official 1975 set – sixty-one survive.

So cool.

In spite of high hopes coming into the weekend, it turned out to be kind of a bust. Reagan and I weren’t feeling super well on Saturday morning, so we scrapped the plan to pick up Piper’s stuff in Jersey, and instead, headed straight to the hospital. By Saturday evening it was pretty apparent that we were both coming down with some sort of ailment.

I spent the entire day, Sunday laid up in bed. Reagan toughed it out and made the trip to church. For her reward, she is feeling even worse today. Neither of us went into work today. I have been logged in from home, trying to get some stuff done. But it has been slow going, since my head is still so cloudy.

Staying home wasn’t a hard decision to make, when we woke up to sideways rain pelting against the window. As nasty as the weather was today, it certainly did make for a cozy sick day. Late in the afternoon, the clouds broke for a minute and I ventured out to move the car (which is when I shot the image above). Hopefully those clouds will take our illness along with them, on their way out of town.

The worst part of this ordeal, of course, is not being able to see Piper. From the nurse’s report, this morning, it seems as though she may have made some progress during the night. They were able to come down on her ventilator settings a bit. Last time she was totally paralyzed they were able to make the same progress. The real test will be, if she can maintain those settings when they back off the sedatives. Fingers crossed. We miss you Piper!

It’s Sundance time in Park City. Being a bit of a street art aficionado, I was pretty excited to hear that Banksy was throwing up some pieces in SLC and PC, since the film “Exit through the Gift Shop,” is debuting at the film festival. I’m hoping that the art will still be there in late Feb., so that I can get some of my own shots of the work. The photo above was shot by my homey Dan Richards. He told me that this particular stencil is off of West Temple and 3rd S., in SLC.

In other news, Piper is doing about the same. She seems like she is doing better, but there is a hard balance between keeping her calm, and over-sedating her. Reagan and I plan to take a trip to Jersey tomorrow to pick up her wardrobe. Hopefully having some of her more stylish threads readily available, will motivate her to recover a little more quickly. Or, at least recover enough to not require the center line anymore, so that she can wear her normal clothes (not that her little clown print gowns aren’t cute).

For some reason, this has seemed like one of the longest weeks, ever. I’m really excited for this weekend, even though it will be a busy one. I’m probably even going to have to spend some time in the office. But for some reason, just by virtue of being the “weekend,” I can always find a degree of solace that I don’t have during the regular work days.

It has been kind of a crazy week for us, already. In addition to being back at my real job, I have been running all over the place, to cover various fashion trade shows, after-parties, etc. I really enjoy it, though. I see a lot of cool stuff and meet a lot of cool people. So I can’t complain much.

Below are just a few random things that I recently found:

• I have taken up sleeping in my clothes. I’m not really sure how it started, or why I keep doing it. It isn’t like it is any more comfortable. It doesn’t really save me any time, either. Because I generally just wake up too hot, a couple of hours later and have to shed anyway. Also, I would really not recommend sleeping in clothes that require dry cleaning.
• The other day, we were talking to some of our friends about when we first started hanging out. I’m paraphrasing here, but they told us that, in trying to decide if they wanted to hang out, the convo went something like “are you sure that you want to hang out with them? Isn’t he that kid who wears his hat sideways?” I guess that I never realized what a potential friend deterrent hats, or how they are worn, could be. Hehe
• Reagan and I were eating Subway sandwiches at some point over the weekend (one tends to eat a lot of Subway, when camped out at the hospital), when Reagan started admiring what an amicable chap our sandwich artist was. Do they still call them sandwich artists? Anyway, Reagan proceeded to tell me that if anything happened to me, she would get with the sandwich guy. I told her that if anything ever happened to her, I would get with Eva Mendez. I remembered that convo, when I saw the new CK billboard, Tuesday night. Also, Reagan made me admit that E. Mendez is the real reason that I own “2 Fast 2 Furious.” Although, I do like the cars, too. I hope that nothing ever happens to Reagan (or me).
• There is an event that some of our friends are planning for this weekend. On the latest round of planning email, our status was marked as “figuring it out.” Hahahaha. I feel like that is a truism that can be applied to just about any facet of my life, currently.