We arrived in France this morning. We actually flew into a small airport in the countryside. I was a bit annoyed, at first, about having to ride on a bus for another hour to actually get to Paris. We saw some beautiful countryside though. Actually, Reagan slept. Our hotel room here is pretty tiny. Reagan on our veranda-

And now for some very touristy shots–

The sky was awesome this evening. The light in the evening seemed a bit surreal. I had the wrong lens with me to shoot the tower. So, there might be some additional ones coming.

And here is one of my favs, Reagan about to fall asleep in her tea after a long day of wandering around.

Yesterday evening, J Crew held their Fall 11 preview in the MPD. It was awesome late afternoon sun, and one side of the showroom was letting a lot of it in. Even though there isn’t much J Crew product visible in the shot above, I couldn’t help but snap it, because of the light and the awesome flares it was making in the lens. Here is the color version.

I really liked the hair color/sweater color combo in the shot above.

And this guy came too:

And the big winner of giveaway No. 4 is…. Actually let me preface this by saying, thank you-thank you for all of the comments. I love reading about what people are listening to.  I really did like them all. I could tell that each person had put some thought into what they were sharing. So, I had to resort to good old random.org. Even though it doesn’t seem very random,  random.org chose the number 1. So– congratulations, Foodie!

I’m pretty sure that Reagan has your address. But if you wouldn’t mind forwarding it in an email, the buds are yours.

Working from home, again today. I was just sitting here, banging away on the keyboard, when out of my peripheral vision, it looked like a low flying plane was about to buzz our building. When I turned to look, it was actually just a falcon coming in for landing on the aerial antenna of the building next door. So, awesome! I hurried and threw a long lens on to snap a couple of shots.  Such a beautiful bird. Who says we don’t have nature in NYC?

I’m getting pretty amped for the weekend. I’m really hoping to feel better by tomorrow, so that I can fully enjoy my day off at the mini-family reunion at Piper’s house. I’m actually hoping to feel better tonight, because I’m supposed to be shooting something that has the potential to be pretty cool. For now, back to clicking.

If you think that this blog is boring as crap lately, I’m totally right there with you. It is only partially my fault, though. I have been slaving like mad at my real job for the past while. As a result, I have had an extremely limited amount of time to have any sort of creative thoughts. What is worse, is that I have hardly been able to see my little girl at all. On top of that, our lease on the FJ is up, next week. So, we spent most of the day Saturday figuring out a new car situation. We ended up picking up a ’11 Jetta. Apparently Reagan is almost as obsessive about German automobilia as I am. I had no idea. The Audi that I had when Reagan and I met is probably still my favorite car that I have ever owned. It is funny how you get all budget conscious and relatively tame when you put on the wedding ring. Anyway, Reagan is completely stoked about our brand new little whip. It is costing us about half of what we paid on the FJ. So, from that standpoint, I have to say that I’m pretty pleased as well. After we turn in the FJ tomorrow, the only thing really stressing me out will be building Reagan’s e-commerce cart for her blob sale.

The shot above is the view out of my (home) office on Friday morning at 6:30 AM. It is basically the best thing that I have snapped in the last 3 days, hahahah. But, there are some forthcoming photo events that I’m looking forward to. One, is shooting some items from our Brooklyn designer friend for a little profile piece I’m doing on SJ. In addition, I booked a commercial gig for the middle of the month that I’m really looking forward to. I think that there are also going to be plenty of Piper photos, as well as a few shots of the new whip (her name is Greta, BTW) in the mix over the next few days. So, there is all of that. I hope that everyone else is having a less eventful (in a relaxing kind of way) weekend. Let’s catch up soon.

(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…

It’s from the P-pit show, night. Also, I’m thinking about abandoning Facebook. Not for any sort of noble reason (afraid of privacy issues, etc..). Mostly just so that I’m not tempted to waste time browsing it. I’m still deliberating.

We were able to see Piper in real life, this morning, for the first time in over a week. She definitely looked like she is doing better. It was tough for us to get a real sense of how she is feeling though, since she slept during the entire time that we were there. Her nurse said that she thinks Piper has her days and nights mixed up. I don’t blame you, lil’ Pip. If I had been drugged into a coma like they had you, I probably would have a lot more than my days and nights mixed up. Even though we were kind of bummed that we couldn’t see her awake, it was really really nice to see her, at all.

Reagan and I still aren’t feeling 100% better. But we just threw on some face masks and called it “good enough.” Although, Reagan wouldn’t wear her’s over her nose– hahaha.

Piper’s A-line is now out. So, the only remaining inter venous line is her center line. She is still getting a pretty stiff cocktail of meds through it, but in each case the dose is much smaller. Her nurse also told us that they are going to try to get her completely off of the nitric this week, as well as the morphine. She didn’t say anything about the NG tube (the one going into her nose), but hopefully that will be coming out soon, too. I’m sure that it drives Piper completely crazy. Such a tough little girl.

YAPFMDC=”yet another photo from my desk chair.” Yes, that was the best I could come up with, tonight. Apple drops an iPad, I serve up this. I haven’t been feeling particularly creative or motivated for the last couple of days. So, there it is.

Reagan and I are both still too sick to see Piper, which is a total bummer. Of course she is comatose for days, when we are at her bedside the entire time. Then as soon as she starts to make some progress, we are both out of commission. I know it sounds like I’m complaining. But I promise, I’m not. From my discussions with Piper’s nurse, she did have some problems during the night with her saturation, but was doing better again in the morning. She is now conscious for extended periods of time, and apparently not getting too upset about it. They have given her enough slack in her restraints, so that she can poke her own face, which I’m sure she is pleased with. I’m really really really hoping that at least one of us is over this bug convincingly enough , that we can pay a personal visit Thursday.

In other news– there are some very important dates coming up. First of all: Sunday is the third anniversary of Reagan and I making nuptials. Hehehe, is there really any nerdier way to write that? Doubt it. Thennnnnaaaahhhhh: Next Thursday is Reagan’s B-day!!!!!

I had to be in the office for a while on Saturday. When I arrived downtown, it was late afternoon, and it was like a ghost town. It was totally freezing outside. The only people that I really saw were occasional groups of tourists. The sun was totally lighting up the west side of the downtown post office. So I stopped to take this shot. Not the first time I have had fun with this piece. I walk past it almost every day, at least once. So, why not?

What is even better, is that after I got this shot, I was packing everything bag into my bag, when a group of tourists who were kind of off to the side watching me pulled in right behind me and started breaking out their cameras. Like run-on sentences much? This is why that’s funny (the incident, not the fact that it was expressed in a run-on sentence, it’s pretty obvious why that’s funny).

Below is a detail from the shot above.

These are some reading glasses that I got a couple of months ago to take the strain off my eyes during those long stints of staring at the monitor. Reagan and I both had some fun with them last night.