Celeste loved Girl Scout Camporee. Her entire troop of 17 girls attended this Saturday. It was at Camp Butano Creek, which is gorgeous, green, with small hills and meadows and cabins, full of redwoods and banana slugs and with a creek running through it.

I won't go into detail right now, because I'm tired, but I wanted to be sure to mention it!

A friend was having a birthday celebration last Sunday at this trailer park-themed bar in San Francisco called Butter. I'm sure I've mentioned it before. When their kitchen is open (it's not on Sunday, unfortunately) they serve all manner of deep fried atrocities (not as bad as that time Homer Simpson deep fried his shirt, or an entire platter of ( Read more... )

My cousin's girlfriend, whom I've never met and am not even friends with on Facebook, made a very sad post today. Colin is a cousin that I've always had a particular fondness for, since we were little kids, so even though I don't know his girlfriend (they live in another state), I feel a sense of closeness to her. In pictures together they always ( Read more... )

At times when I'm interacting with my children (especially Derek) I find it shocking how astute they can be, while simultaneously being so oblivious to so many things ( Read more... )

Celeste greeted me with a "Hi. How are you?" in Gaelic when I picked her up from school today. Each day she's excited to tell us new facts about the Ohlone tribe. She explained to me the tragedy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, and why Christopher Columbus wasn't that great ( Read more... )

I'm happiest when I'm being creative. This is why I became a photographer. But now that I'm doing it as a job, the photography doesn't always fulfill the need. The act of taking the photographs is usually good, but other aspects of the work are tedious; after a while you just can't spend too much time fiddling with a photo in post-processing or you ( Read more... )

I had a wonderful birthday ( Read more... )

At my cousin Megan's wedding I committed one of the ultimate faux pas: unintentionally insulting a pregnant woman ( Read more... )

Derek was sick last week. We had a brief reprieve over the labor day weekend, and then Celeste came down with it on Monday morning. Derek was better by Friday afternoon, but he and Gene stayed home during Brittany's birthday dinner on Saturday night, which was just as well, because it was Thai food, and Derek, being peanut allergic, can't really do ( Read more... )

The oppressive (for the Bay Area) heat (which means 80+ degrees when you can't be in a swimming pool) makes it seem like it's still school's out summer time, and yet the children went back to school this Monday ( Read more... )