Fashion Plates

When we were trying to decide how to dress T for my sisters wedding the idea of putting him in a kilt somehow came up, and it stuck. We did some research and found my families tartan (we went with the green one) and that was pretty much the end of it. When it first came in the mail T wouldn't wait to put it on and spent an afternoon running around outside bare from the wast up, wearing just the kilt. Like he's going to go throw logs or whatever. Here's the inevitable photo-shoot, I couldn't coax an ounce of cooperation from my guy of course, so this represents about five minutes of activity.

These last two are my favorites.

Chinese Take-out

Flight Home

Ft. Worth

Taken from our hotel during our weekend in TX.

The day we arrived.

Some views from our room. They had overbooked and gave us the option of taking a different room, better and higher up, or spend two days at another hotel at their expense, then move back when they had a room. We chose the former because it seemed easier but walked by the other hotel later to find it much nicer. Oops. Still, I think downtown Ft. Worth is pretty and we had a great view.

T got a new car.

Cattlemen's Steak House. Ordered a Manhattan and got a rocks glass with just under room temp bourbon. Probably should have known better.

Halloween

T went as Huckle Cat, a Richard Scary character. Almost every morning since then, as part of his routine, he requests whiskers be painted on his face. He's recently begun requesting additional flourishes such as eyebrows and additional eyes. It can be a little disconcerting.

Looking for clues.

With our neighbor, who went as a jazzerciser or somesuch.

Monrovia

Took a trip to Monrovia the other day to drop a fountain pen off for restoration. Turns out the pen I wanted to get fixed will cost more than I want to pay for now (the end of the nib is broken off, almost microscopic but enough to triple the cost for restoration). I did get to stop for a second to take some pix of the old train station there.

Love this typeface.

The side.

Not the station, but the light and the trees looked nice.

I even shot some film (!!!). No idea when I'll be able to develop it, but it's nice to have something better than a phone pic.

As for the pen, it's back to the drawing board, so to speak. I inherited a few, one of which I believe can be fixed cheaply. So I plan to do that and use it a bit, then if I feel it's worth it, spend the money on the others. Of course, the two I like the most are in need of new nibs, the expensive part.

Flight to TX

Twelve Years...

Twelve years ago today I packed up my little car and came out to Los Angeles.

I have some pix of that first trip out; of Roswell where I spent my first night, the desert and the VLA, but they've gone missing somewhere. So this will have to suffice, a picture I took in Roswell last time I was through bringing Charlie back from TX. It's changed a bit, the Denny's I ate in the first time is closed (a Denny's!!) but the UFO museum is still there, preserved by the arid desert heat.

But twelve years in LA, happy anniversary to me.

The view of Griffith Park Observatory from our kitchen in Los Feliz.

Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall. 

Thom Mayne's Caltrans building. They call it the Death Star.

Cranes at the harbor.

A gift

I received a nice gift in the mail yesterday (though the friend who passed it on insists I consider it "a redistribution of crap" instead, I can't help but think of it as a gift). Uh huh, what is it? It's an old photo album a friend said his mother picked up in Berlin in the 60's. Not sure how to date the book itself but it seems to have been designed for carte-de-visites. Big leather binding with a coat of arms and flower motif embossed on the front. Actually reminiscent of some daguerreotypes I have. And it's full of someone's family portraits. All cabinet cards, mostly what look like albumen prints but a few that I suspect are platinum. I'm tempted to pull them out to see if any are dated and to look at the studio imprints on the backings which are always interesting. The pages are really brittle though so I hesitate to do that. That said, it's a nice addition to my collection.

Last Saturdays Sunset

The clouds made for a vivid display sort of unusual for this area.

Trip Downtown

Took a trip downtown today to see how long it takes to get there on the metro. Took these during the trip.

Pershing Square station ascent.

I've taken this picture before, but I can't help it. I love this fixture.

LA river.

New Years Day

The best thing about LA during the holidays is that's everybody pretty much clears out or stays home so it's relatively easy to get anywhere in the city in about 20 minutes. And it's the only time you can get from Pasadena to Malibu in 45, so, lacking any other plans, we decided to avail ourselves of the easy transit and go visit the beach.

It was overcast and a little chilly so we bundled up...

But it didn't slow some of the locals down. My teeth chattered watching them.

T's new game was to pitch his firetruck out into the surf and have his dad go fetch it. Good times. I only had to fetch T from the waves a couple of times.

Dear Blogosphere...

It's been so long since I've paid any attention to you, since early October in fact. Don't feel bad though, Flickr has suffered the same neglect, so it's not just you. Of course, I have my excuses but we all know about them. Since the beginning of October we've had a wedding that involved a bit of travel, birthdays, holidays, the end of my second to last semester which involved a lot of writing, and a constant plague of colds and general yuckiness courtesy of our pediatricians office and T's new daycare. The end result is that I haven't had the motivation to pay the kind of attention to you that I know you deserve.

I promise though, on this second day of twenty-ten, to pay more attention to you in the next year. Or at least to try, let's face it, most resolutions are long forgotten by mid February so I'm not really going to lose any sleep over my missing blog posts while I'm washing down an In 'n Out with a tumbler full of whisky at 2am and wondering at my expanding girth. That said though, I do have a few things coming up that might get me back on track. I'm starting my final semester of school at the end of the month which involves an internship at the Los Angeles Public Library Central Branch, which in turn means by-weekly trips downtown and hopefully some picture taking. I'm even considering starting another blog to help record my interning experience on a regular basis to make it easier to write my papers or whatever is involved at the end (and we all know the world needs another self absorbed blog to eat up some bandwidth, and I'm happy to oblige). I also have a backlog of Flickr-ing and picture posting to do. I haven't been shooting much, but I have a few posts worth I'd say. So we'll see.

Thanks for your patience, though, blogosphere. I promise to get off my ass 2.0 and try to show up on occasion.