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May 25, 2010. Living in Oregon is a pretty special thing, for a heck of a lot of reasons, one of which is the coast--dramatic, long, and almost entirely protected through state parks or state forests. I cobbled together a gallery from several different trips over the last two years of the mid-coast. I'm planning on revamping the other gallery from the coast I currently have up which consists mainly of older pictures from the northern coast, and there will be some glorious day when I will visit the southern coast and make one of those, too. And no matter how many repetitive pictures of dunes and beaches and rocky shores there will be in all of them, I probably won't get tired of them. Because, seriously, it's the ocean. And who can get tired of that. - January 8, 2010. Two updates in two weeks - what a roll I am on! For the past three years there has been a sizable stack of photo boxes sitting on my desk. Slowly I am opening them and seeing what surprises me. This week, it was pictures from South Dakota, another random installment from our 2007 cross country trip. - December 30, 2009. I went to make a Seattle gallery and realized I had already taken way too many pictures there to fit in one gallery. So I looked through photos from 2007 & 2008 and made one from those, and a 2009 & 2010 Seattle gallery will be forthcoming. What a great city. - September 25, 2009. After living here officially for two years as of this month, I've put together my first Portland gallery from our first year here in 2007. Looking back at these pictures/that time, it seems so recent, and yet it feels like we've been here forever. I miss the East Coast dearly, but I have to say, I am pretty in love with this place. - June 3, 2009. The first (random) installment from the cross country trip Kathy and I took almost two years ago to get ourselves (and as much crap as we could fit in our tiny red car) from Boston to Portland: a gallery from our stop in Chicago is up. - May 11, 2009. So. Almost a year after I said I would update with this, and almost two summers past when we actually visited, there is a New Hampshire gallery up. - July 24, 2008. The New England Road Trip continues, with a gallery from Acadia National Park in Maine now up. Maine: What a big, big weird place! & Acadia is just a tiny part of it, but what a pretty, wonderful part of it. Next: New Hampshire! It just occurs to me as I update this that we were going to all these places exactly a year ago. Strange how slow and fast a year always goes. - May 26, 2008. I have spent the vast majority of today scanning photos, typing HTML, and downloading Tom Petty songs, and I don't feel ashamed of any of it, because it was all surprisingly satisfying. Perhaps because it was more just an entire day of indulging in unabashed nostalgia about New England, and indulging in places I used to be takes my mind away from stressing about where I am now. The result is a gallery for Rockport. This really accomplishes two things: a revamp of my old Rockport gallery, which was up here years ago and which hadn't been touched since, and it also began the process of actually beginning to do stuff with all the pictures from Kathy's & my New England Road Trip of 2007. Which was a really good time. Other than that, I don't have much to say, other than Oh my my, oh hell yes, you've got to put on that party dress is a really good line. - January 20, 2008. Life has been strange and uncertain for me lately. I'm currently unemployed, so for fun, let's just pretend this is my job. So I was productive and finally finished up a Boston: 2005 gallery, which I have been playing with on and off ever since I last updated. Hurray! Paycheck, please. - October 15, 2007. Still wrapping up some loose ends from the Oregon/California Wild West Tour of the spring - with this installment, the Columbia River & the Coast of Oregon, with a splash of Washington as well. The only pictures from this trip which aren't up now are from Portland. Since I spent such a relatively short time in Portland on that trip, and since I live here now, I am considering waiting for awhile - perhaps until the end of the year - to make a better Portland: 2007 gallery. We've been taking a lot of outdoorsy, hiking excursions here, and I've been bringing my digital camera each time, but there are two things I haven't done: 1) brought out my film camera, and 2) walked around alone downtown with a camera, just to explore and take pictures. That was how I got to know Boston, and so I can only assume that when that happens, I'll start to really feel at home in this city. - October 6, 2007. Once upon a time I left the little town in Pennsylvania I had lived in since a baby and made my way to a Big City, On My Own - Boston, Massachusetts, where people can't pronounce their R's and are obsessed with baseball and the only place in the nation where you can get married no matter who you are or who you love, where old cemeteries filled with crumbling and historic graves and old beautiful churches are strangely and wonderfully mixed in with modern concrete and glass. It wasn't so much scary at first (although it was that, too) as lonely, but bit by bit it became my home. I graduated from college, and hung out a bit longer. Eventually, I decided to leave, for new sights and adventures. And although I had guessed it would happen, I missed it horribly once I settled into my new sights and adventures. I missed the grittiness and the prettiness of the city, the public transportation, but mostly the people and their sense of humor. Their down to earth cynicism, their dirty jokes, it's something I can't exactly describe, but I miss it. Although I will definitely return to Boston to visit, perhaps many times, there's a certain sadness in knowing that it will never actually be the same because I will always be a visitor, whereas for five years, I lived there. So how to come to terms with my loss and affection for the city of Boston? Through photos, of course, through all the pictures I was always too busy to really thoroughly go through. So that's what I'm going to do now, year by year. The quality and the quantity of the pictures will probably increase as the years go on and I knew the city and myself better. For now: 2004. - September 17, 2007. So here I am - in Portland, Oregon, on the opposite coast of where I have always lived. We are finally settled into an apartment and starting to know our way around, & there is so much to explore. We are very much in debt, but still, there is so much to explore, & so many photos to be taken. In my temporary state of unemployment I started getting some work done on here in order to feel like a worthwhile, productive human being, and some of those pictures from that Oregon/California Wild West Tour visit we took way back in the spring which I blabbed about on here are finally organized. Completed so far: Eugene and Los Angeles. Soon to come: Portland; the Oregon Coast; a crapload of pictures from our cross country road trip here; and all those pictures I took over the last few years but never really went through in Boston, city that I love. - May 30, 2007. Although there are obviously pictures from every trip I take that I cherish, when I look back on the places I've gone in the last few years, there's two photo galleries that stick out in my mind of having photos I really love: Colorado, and New Orleans. I've taken down my New Orleans gallery (and my Montreal one, which also needs revision) until I can make it look like it should, but my Colorado one is now fully revised and ready to go once again. Hurrah! Now that I have that project done, I feel like I can start moving onto all these pictures from my amazing trip to Oregon and California last month. It's a bit daunting, though - I took so, so many pictures. I feel like wherever I go nowadays, I am increasingly taking so, so many pictures. - April 14, 2007. So I'm currently in a scanning frenzy, a frenzy consisting almost entirely of pretty old pictures, and consequently I am actually getting things done. Meaning, I am becoming more organized both physically and on this website, & the more organized I am with the hundreds of pictures I've taken in the past the more ready I am to move on with the future. I am actually on my way to having a comprehensive website of my love affairs with travel & photography. There is now a southern California gallery, consisting of pictures from San Diego, Yosemite, and Route 1 along the coast. Considering I took this trip all the way back in 2001, some pictures from it did exist in a gallery here a long time ago but I don't think I've really looked back on it since then, and so I feel this is the first time the gallery has really been complete and comprehensive. In just a week or two Kathy & I are headed on a mega-awesome West Coast Tour Vacation, consisting of hot spots in Oregon and then a quick trip down to LA to visit dear friends of ours. We'll only be in LA for a few days, unfortunately, but maybe I'll get enough pictures to add on to my California galleries. That indeed would be mega-awesome. Also, if by any chance someone is reading this from the Boston area, you should head out to the Starbucks located at 125 Summer Street, between South Station and Downtown Crossing, where I'm currently showing six lovely, framed, shiny photographs. I just hung them up today and although half of me is worried that I'll show up to the store tomorrow to find half of them fallen down with the glass shattered, the other half of me is quite proud. So go. And then you can just keep on walking down the street and visit the new Institute of Contemporary Art and have a whole artfully lovely day. (Thursday nights are free!) - March 21, 2007. The last time I had a gallery of New York City up on this site was probably four years ago. I'm sure I took it down in one of my many re-vamps, thinking I'd put it up again once I went through to make a more comprehensive gallery, and then I kept taking trips to NYC and taking more pictures and kept putting off taking the time to put them all together with all the older pictures. But yeah, so, I finally did it, and I'm pretty shocked/pleased with myself. - March 7, 2007. So last fall, our very very good friend Sam invited Kathy & I to tag along with her while she visited her hometown of Pittsburgh for an extended weekend. Always being up for an excuse to not go to work, Kathy & I said, "Sure!" It was really more of a trip to the suburbs than to the city, per se, but we visited the farm owned by some of Sam's uncles, and man, I went kind of crazy with pictures. Although I explain why in the gallery, I'll sum it up here again anyway: I was really in my element, being that 1) it was fall, my favorite season of all; 2) I was in Pennsylvania, which, being that I spent the first eighteen years of my life there I will be forever sentimental about, even in areas of the state which have nothing to do with me; 3) there were so many fruits & vegetables to take photographs of, and if I have learned anything about myself, it's that I like taking pictures of fruits & vegetables. I gathered the crapload of digital pictures I took on Flickr soon after we returned from the weekend, but some of my really favorite pictures from the weekend came with the film rolls I got developed later. So finally, now, I've combined those film prints with some of my favorite digital ones into one gallery. Sam took a picture of me which I believe really captures how triumphant I was feeling:
Two cameras, lots of pumpkins and trees, plus two of my best friends: it was a good time. - January 20, 2007. Greetings, 2007, and whomever is reading this! Which, perhaps, is no one. So...yeah, 2007! My first present of the year for you is a gallery of photos taken last fall in Newburyport, Massachusetts. How many galleries of cutesy suburban Massachusetts towns can I make, you ask? Apparently...a lot. Which is fine by me. - December 6, 2006. Although it has been completed for awhile, it has taken me some time to write a note about it here in the updates, for some reason. So, here you have it: the Hawaii galleries are done, with Maui and Kauai now up as well. There's also yet another addition to my Massachusetts galleries, with Lowell. Also, I have submitted a photo to the latest issue of JPG Magazine - and this week is the last week for voting. So if you feel so inclined, I would love if you clicked right here. Many, many more pictures to share soon. After I finish my application for grad school - which will hopefully happen by next week - I will have more time to work on things. And hopefully, someday, my life will stop being a list of things I will do "after ____." I have faith. It could happen. - August 7, 2006. Finally, I have begun to compile my Hawaii galleries. I'm doing them by island, and Oahu is now up, with Maui and Kauai arriving soon. Realistically, I'm not sure if I'll be able to finish them, or much of anything else, in August. Never have so many changes been crowded into one month, both good and bad. I think only when September hits will I be able to comprehend it all. -
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