Ryan needed a California Driver’s License for a job application so off to the DMV. We took the 21, got there in perfect timing, which was weird since most of our vacations, while fun, never fall on schedule.
Ryan made an appointment. Thank goodness, that places was packed. Though, I never have been to such an efficient DMV or DoR.
He passed the test, horray. Now he is officially a citizen of the great state of California, kinda. ;-)
Ever since the lasik I have felt that I’ve become a bit dyslexic and this was illustrated as we walked out of the DMV and found ourselves faced with a classic city hot dog stand.
However, what I saw was something different. Yes, they both sold hot dogs and both offered you two gallons of mustard and ketchup, just one pump away… But the one I saw had direction, had a message and was owned by Jesus, the son of God…
This is what I saw
I think it is a sign. I think what this tells us is that Jews can in fact consume ham, if it is good enough for Jesus… or maybe these were Kosher Jesus Hot Dogs. I’m still not sure.
We made it to San Francisco a couple of hours late, something to do with excessive traffic on the runway at SFO. So that kinda sucked but I got some work done with the extra time so I guess it wasn’t so bad.
Oh, but there is a problem. The car rental place closes at 6pm. Our plane landed at 4:15, we got our luggage at 4:45, we got on the Bart at 5:00 and we have a 50 minute ride to our stop and then a seven block, up hill walk to Avis with a 50lb suitecase and two carryons. If we don’t make it, we are screwed.
We make it. (meh, not in the mood to create rising action, straight to the dénouement)
Get the GPS, not dealing with getting lost at this point, not matter how well I know the city. Head to Santa Rosa. We meet up with Kayla and Jeana for some awesome Sushi. Awesome sushi. Of course, why wouldn’t it be awesome? It’s California sushi.
After dinner I give Ryan a tour of Santa Rosa. Where I worked, where I went to school, where I lived, where I hung out, it was way too exciting for me. The house where Seth and I lived was totally renovated and looks amazing.
So then we are off to the river house, where I lived when I first moved to California and where I ended my stint in California and where I will likely pick back up, my life in California. It was late, we were tired… I go to the door, insert my key, pull the handle, it opens.
Then, without hesitation, it slams itself closed.
I try again. It closes again.
We hear a voice speaking through the crack in the door, “Hello? Who is this?”. I reply, he opens the door a crack, tells us he needs to get dressed and asks if we can go through the back.
Get dressed? Ok? Back door, sure. We have what I can only guess was a rabid Australian Cattle Dog mixed-up-mutt threatening our lives with his backing, snarling and dripping canines. Vincent, the man who answered the door, the owner of the dog and the contractor on the house, insists the creature is harmless, and frantically lets us into the house. He shows us all the work he has done… blah blah, we certainly can’t stay there. I guess Vincent has taken to living there. Hmmm.
We make some calls, no one has a place for us and we end back, after touring through Healdsburg, back in Santa Rosa and we sleep in our car.
Thanks Home Depot parking lot. Meh, it wasn’t so bad, we woke up early, got some breakfast, met up with Callie and my old Starbucks customers and friends. And then it’s off to San Francisco.
Drop off the car, unload our luggage at the hotel, and then I go to lunch with my cousin Patrick at this great little place called Mario’s Cigar Shop. Fantastic paninis.
Despite sleeping in a rental car our first night in California, we had a blast.
Last night, after enjoying a meatless bar-b-que with Geoffrey I went off to The Blue Note to see Chase’s band, Scouts, play.
I hung around for the first band to play, headed by a feisty lesbian (broad assumption), they rocked pretty hard. Not my particular style, but I did enjoy their sound. I had not been to The Blue Note in a while so that was fun in itself. Not many people were around for the first band, but as they left the stage and Scouts went on to setup, people starting coming in through the woodwork.
I watched them set up their stuff. Glad I didn’t have to do it.
They were awesome, of course. Just for who cares, my friend Chase is the guy directly above this picture. It’s pretty cool, like three of the guys in the band all play percussion, keyboard and guitar. Something like that. I thought that was pretty awesome, but maybe that’s cause i don’t play any of those things…
I went upstairs to waste some time while their broke down their stuff and saw a sign for the women’s restroom and it totally reminded me of how Chase says “ladies”. So… I took a picture of it. Of course I did.
The concert was great, I look forward to hearing them play again, hopefully a longer set. I’m also hoping to do some photography for them, just like some studio type work, but we’d need to find a cool set/place and I’d probably need to get some new strobes (read, an SB-800 or two) to do it properly. Course, for that money, I could get an AlienBees strobe light setup which would kick 20 SB-800’s collective asses!
I did a photoshoot today at the Wine and Cheese Bistro featuring Chef Cyr and his dish, Seared Scallop with Spring Asparagus and Apple Cider Country Ham Vinaigrette. Yes, quite the mouthful.
Micheal and I went to the Wine and Cheese Bistro a few weeks ago and were definitely not impressed. We had a good time but the salad was weak and the cheese tray a disappointment. I guess we just ordered the wrong things because the dish that Chef Cyr delivered to the table today was beautiful and if it tasted as good as it smelled, incredible.
The lighting in there wasn’t so great. Was hoping to use the “natural” light in the restaurant but had a sneaky suspicion that I wasn’t going to get that option. The combination of overhead, low wattage incandescent lights with the green tinted sunlight streaming in the windows… yuck. Green faces and orange foreheads.
Here’s what I had taking a shot of the area before adding my lights.
Then, we turn on the left light and see what that looks like. It is a 650w light bouncing off a white light screen.
Let’s try the right light. It’s a 1000w light shining through a softbox to diffuse the light.
Put them together and this is what you get! 1650 watts of lighting power! Muhahahaha!!!
Click below to see all four combined and larger
So here are a few shots of the dish and Chef Cyr. He was a fantastic sport getting his picture taken.
Click above picture to enlarge
I had a fun time taking the pictures and he was fun to talk to while I did the portraits. I wish I had another softbox so I could close the aperture a little more to decrease the depth of field but, oh well. Sure looks a lot better than what I started out with! Just goes to show the necessity of good lighting.
The other day I wrote about needing a picture in order to post these days. That or unwrought emotion. Pictures are safer ;-)
So I went to Rock Bridge State Park to visit the Devil’s Icebox cave. It’s a pretty neat place, very cool, literally. It went from around 80-90 degrees to the 50’s in just a short trip down some stairs. It was fabulous.
The entrance is pretty majestic and daunting when you are alone. I just knew someone, or something, was going to get me as soon as I turned my back on the stairs and began my journey into the cave.
The cave is 11 kilometers deep, I went in about 50 feet before I decided that was enough. In my defense, I was carrying my Nikon D80, Tokina 10-17mm and my SB-600 flash. Plus I wasn’t wearing my “play clothes” haha. Oh, and there was the whole, no flashlight deal and the, is that a serial killer just around the bend waiting to kill me, thing. Yeah, I wasn’t paranoid at all.
All and all it was a fun little trip all by myself. It would have been a lot more fun had taken a friend with me and the proper cave exploring tools, like a lantern…
The temperature difference hit me pretty good and hard once I got out of the cave. Hot, humid and gross. Fogged up my lens pretty nicely but created an interesting effect on this picture.
Ahhh, even though I didn’t take but a few pictures, and even though the park is pretty damn boring, I had my fun.
I am coming to realize that I cannot post without a picture to “muse” me. So, I’m going to leave you with this picture for now, while I go out and take a picture of something new and relevant. Till then, let this entertain you from Halloween 2005.
Ryan and I decided to go the “green” route home from Chicago and took the new Megabus from Union Station to Union Station.
The bus was brand new, clean and pleasant. Nothing like the China Bus Ryan and I took to New York City from Washington DC. Nothing like that haha.
I would say that the Megabus is aimed at college students more than anyone else. You must make your reservations online which not only cuts costs but consequently prevents “bums” from getting on board. You have to have access to a computer with an internet connection and a credit card to make the reservation. I guess this is a good idea, maybe I just don’t have an opinion on it. I fear sounding elitist by saying it was nice to not have sketchy people on the seat across from you, that sounds bad so let’s just pretend I never typed it, k?
One interesting dynamic, a bit of Rosa Parks perhaps… The bottom floor of the double decker bus was inhabited by white middle to upper middle class girls. Not a boy or non-caucasian in sight. Go up the stairs and 90% black girls. There was one older Greek woman, two Asian boys and the two of us.
I guess the minorities were forced upstairs, no matter what minority you were in haha. The upstairs was nice though, more seats and a fantastic view, the downstairs has some seats facing other seats with a table in between. Magnificent! Next time we go we are going to take those seats so we can chit chat with others and play Blackjack or something. We played together, I won Blackjack but Ryan kicked my ASS in a game of War.
We made our first and unnecessary stop in Normal Illinois. The passenger we were waiting on never showed, boo to that.
Our second stop was at a truckstop/laundro-mat/restaurant/arcade/store… It was all sorts of white trash.
What more could you ask for? How about really fucking scary dolls?
Not enough? How about some “turn from sin, turn to Christ” cassette tapes. Yes, you read that right, cassettes.
One guy from the bus took of the boxes of tapes to the bus. The entire box. Lord only knows what he plans to do with them (pun not totally intended).
The entire place was pretty hilarious. I understand that truckers need a place to chill when on the road, a place to escape to outside of their trucks… But why does the place have to be so trashy?
The “Lounge” consisted of a couple of cheap metal chairs, a 19″ color television broadcasting the cliche Nascar race of the day and some neon lights of various colors hung haphazardly on the wall.
The smell was something else, wow.
We were given about thirty minutes to hang out there, get lunch at one of the nearby fast food establishments and just stretch out legs.
Of course, as with any stop, there has to be a few stupid people that disregard the time constraints. I swear, how do these people get through life? Three girls were left behind at Subway until someone yelled from upstairs to the downstairs of the girls running behind the bus a good fifty yards back.
Hilarious? Yes. Would I have liked for them to run an extra 100 yards? Of course.
We got into St. Louis despite the acts of God going on around us. The storms were so strong that they were pushing the bus between two different lanes. We got home safe and sound and then crashed, poor Ryan had to be at work five hours later!
All and all, I will definitely take the Megabus again, hopefully pretty soon!
So I’m here in Chicago at Starbucks and it’s out last day here. Actually, it’s our last half day here. How sad.
We have had a wonderful time here taking in the sites, hanging out with friends and bumping into friends we didn’t even know lived here!
Our first day here, we met outside of Orange. It is this really neat breakfast/brunch type cafe off Harrison near the library. I had not seen Ryan in a few weeks so that was a pretty special moment for us both.
We both enjoyed a delicious breakfast, Ryan had these waffle and fruit shish-kabobs and I had a simple small order of silver dollar pancakes and eggs. With the main course we had a tasty treat called Frushi. It’s fruit sushi and it’s really quite tasty. A little but on the sweet side but good none-the-less.
My early flight had me up around 5:00 am and Ryan was on the bus from like 11:00pm the day before. That being said, we were quite tired. We picked up our suitcases and proceeded to make the venture down State to our hotel stopping at a few sites along the way.
They fella who checked us into our hotel room was a nice enough guy but got on our nerves a little bit when he was moving our bed from a king to two double beds. He said a few times, “are you sure you want just one bed”, “are you sure, it’s a smaller room and just one bed”. I took this a little better than Ryan I think haha.
We got into our room and took a little nap before exploring the city. When we woke up Ryan showed me the surprise he had gotten us. A Canon SD870-IS. I was way excited. For a few weeks I had been looking at getting a new point and shoot digital camera focusing my efforts on the Canon SD1100-IS. It is a more expensive, supposedly higher-end camera.
After Ryan’s careful research, and famous frugalness, he decided on the 870-IS. And as it turns out, it is a better camera. You do sacrifice the viewfinder in favor of the large LCD, but you gain in the zoom but 0.8x and the image stabilization is in the lens not the CCD which is really a better way at doing it.
Oh, and despite not having a viewfinder and relying on the screen as the only way to view your shot before you take it, it gets something like 30 extra shots per battery charge.
Ryan and I took the new camera with us when we went out that night to Pizzaria Uno, Starbucks, and wherever else we wandered. I really cannot even remember haha.
Sadly, when I was trying to quickly switch from the computer to shoot some video of this guy collecting milk jug caps, I corrupted the secure digital card, or at least the data on the card. So all those pics and videos were lost. Sad. Here is a video I made with the new camera, Jason Mraz’s new song playing in the background. It’s 20 minutes of Starbucks activity squished into 4 minutes.
After some consoling from Ryan and me pouting a good while, we headed out for dinner. As we waited for the Red Line to show up we noticed this gaggle of straight guys trying to figure out the CTA system. There were with a girl and all acting the stereotypical way that hot straight jocks act.
Well, all but one. He was acting the way a stereotypical in-the-closet gay jock acts. It was pretty hilarious. he would brush up against the other guys for no reason, start wrestling fights out of no where… It was so obvious I could not believe that the other guys weren’t catching on.
We were so enraptured by the scene before us that we almost missed two fellow Columbians-come-Chicagoans walking onto the terminal. Tom and his girlfriend!
I have never talked about this couple on my blog. Tom was to pledge Acacia back in the day and I might have suggested that he rethink that. At that time Acacia wasn’t for him and while I could see that, most of the other guys could not. He would have been a guy that was burned by Acacia and I didn’t want to see that.
We have been friends or sorts ever since then and I used to bump into him and his girlfriend all the time in Columbia. It would seem that everyday I would see at least one of them in the most bizarre places.
And what do you know, here I am in a random city in America on one of only two nights in the city on a subway station that they have never been to since they never go to downtown and there they are. They just happened to be visiting his girlfriend’s mother downtown.
We didn’t hang out but we did chat for a bit, it was so fun to see them. Of course Ryan took this as a chance to make fun of me. He seems to think I know too many people because everywhere we go together I know someone. When we first started dating we couldn’t walk ten feet without someone saying hi to me.
We finally made it to Boys Town where our dinner was scheduled to be. Unfortunately Chicago Diner, a vegetarian restaurant, was closing. Nevermind that their hours sated they had one more hour before closing… grrr
They were nice though and sent us to The Pick Me Up. It was a really neat inde-punk rock-emo-hipster half vegetarian restaurant. We had these AWESOME empanadas, wow.
On the way home from The Pick Me Up we bumped into our sexually confused friend from the subway just a few hours earlier. He and his buddies had gotten off a few stops before us but here he was with two of his friends in Boys Town. They were both saying something along the lines of, “Dude, I just don’t feel comfortable around you right now” and “I feel a little weird about you”… I guess he got a few drink in him and finally made his move haha, something Ryan and I had joked about earlier.
Went home, slept, I woke up early to do some work, we met up with Brett and his really great boyfriend for brunch at The Bongo Room. Awesome brunch followed by some shopping down Michigan Avenue and tea at Argo. We need an Argo in Columbia.
Ryan and I broke off from the fun couple and went back to the hotel for a quick nap. Woke up, got all cleaned up and headed to the Chicago Diner again. On the train with us was this guy that looked quite a bit like Chadd, to me at least.
Well worth the second chance. The food was delicious and the service great. Did I mention how good the food was? Before we had even finished dinner I had ordered a copy of their cookbook off Amazon.com haha. You should get a copy too. It is worth it.
We went to a couple of local shops, met a guy named Paris who said I’d be screaming his name in bed that night, he was fun. Apparently Rhianna was there just a couple of days ago. Damn us for not being there at the same time. I would have loved to have met Jay-Z’s alleged ex gay on the side.
Off to Whole Foods and then the Center which is one of the coolest gay advocate sites I had ever been to. We walked around Boys Town for a bit more before going into a bar called Side Track.
Great bar. If you go to Chicago you must go to Side Track. Great drinks, friendly bartenders and fantastic music videos all around. We befriended a bartender named John who works the fourth floor bar there, outside. He is a paramedic just like Ryan and is going to school for journalism. He was such a nice guy, bought us each a Jagerbomb. Tasty.
We went through all of the bar within Side Track. I think there were five… Really quite the classy place.
Then off to Berlin where we almost met this potentially really cool, accidentally hipster-emo fellow who was actually probably just really dorky but we both thought was probably nice and incredibly shy. Unfortunately we are just as shy and we didn’t break the ice though I did make several attempts.
Back to the hotel room, back to sleep, whew. I woke up early to get online and blog this with some pictures and a video I did at Starbucks but AT&T’s internet is down. Boo.
Oh yeah, and I got a free hug!
Well I’m going to wake up Ryan. We don’t have much time left in Chicago so we gotta make the best of it!
I am here in Birmingham Alabama to do a photoshoot with the Taste of the South Magazine and the National Sweet Potato Commission. Right now I am sitting at a two story Starbucks in their old downtown.
As the plane made its rough, really rough, landing, and as I looked out of the window to what would surely be the city I would die in (I swear we all thought the plane was going down) and took a look at my final destination, I had a revelation.
I love Birmingham. Right now, after spending a few hours in the old downtown and just really falling in love with the old downtown, I am just certain that I need to live here. I even picked out an apartment for Ryan and I with it’s own Bar/Restaurant on the ground floor. How sexy is that? I have even planned out our lives here. Oh my!
I had dinner at this awesome restaurant/bar that had all sorts of fun food and lots of veggie foods… Great wine selection of which I had the Bacarro Pinot Grigio. I also passed probably 10 gay people so far, which is not what I expected for a city in Alabama. They rank 47th in hate crimes based on sexual orientation and 50th in overall hate crimes! Awesome (unless I’m reading the statistics backwards…
Look at that adorable fountain. Oh this is lust at first visit. Below is my new church… haha, well it is a Methodist church!
I’m sorry that I’m stuck using my iPhone to take the pics, with it’s new broken camera. I didn’t want to walk around town with my camera bag, but if the weather is nice tomorrow, I certainly will.
What do you think about Birmingham? hmm? Can I convince Ryan to move here? haha, not likely. Cost of living is 4.8% lower and income is 2.5% higher. How awesome is that?
I took a break from the season finale of House (do not tell me how it ended!) to get a shot of the sunset. It really wasn’t anything too spectacular but I figured it would give me a chance to try out HDR again.
I have never done too good of a job at HDR but here’s what I got this time. Click it to zoom in a bit.
The second picture I took was really about ten which I stitched together in Photoshop to make a panorama. The file is 499 megabytes and some how converts to a jpeg to 2mb… So that’s interesting. How something goes from 6000×2300 and 8 bits into just 2mb, I have no idea. Again, click to enlarge.
So while I was taking these pics some random guy in one of the houses started yelling at me to get off of the course. It kinda really bugged me. I had every right to be on the course. My grandparents are members of the country club and own a house on the golf course. They pay for the right for us to use the course. Furthermore, it was after 5:30pm so actually anyone could go on the course. Gah. What a meanie.
I just ignored him, took more pics and continued my conversation with Ryan.
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