Last night Amanda was listening to some music on the stereo, and asked if I could turn the bass down. I was heading to the living room, and I thought, "Wow...the bass really is high!" but then I realized that the rumbling wasn't from the stereo, but from an earthquake. It wasn't super strong, but it was a lot longer than other earthquakes I've felt. Nothing broke or fell over, and Enzo didn't seem to notice at all. The epicenter was down in the South Bay, so I'm curious to hear from my friends down there. Friends, are you okay??

In other news, Happy Halloween! I went to Camila's house for a pumpkin carving party on Sunday, and carved a spider (from a pattern) on the other side of Ryan's pumpkin, where he had carved a skull. I brought the pumpkin home, and put it on a ledge near my apartment building, spider-side out. However, someone keeps turning it around so that it's skull-side out, and I don't know who. So for the past few days, we've been having a silent spider vs. skull pumpkin battle, which has been interesting. I'm just glad that nobody's smashed it yet.

Finally, I'm sleepy today. I'm going to blame it on the fact that I donated blood yesterday, but it's more likely that I'm just lazy.

...from somewhere cool this time! I spent most of last week with 6 med students (and 1 other non-med student) at Margie's parents' place in Kailua, on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. (Incidentally, I think that Margie is the only person I actually know to have a for reals Wikipedia entry.) Sweet.

So the thing I learned about vacationing with medical students is that, well, they suck at vacationing. We arrived Tuesday afternoon, and after settling in for a bit, we all headed to the beach. After no more than 30 minutes there, someone piped up with, "Hey, does anyone want to go on a run?" And the weird thing was, three people said yes! So within a couple of hours of arriving, we'd already lost half the group to exercise. This trend continued throughout the trip, and even I fell victim to its grip, and went running twice. The tendrils of healthy living even made their way into our mealtimes, and I witnessed a conversation that went almost verbatim like this: "Well, I could make a big salad for dinner." "Oooh, a salad! That sounds so good." "And some fruit!" The fat-free icing on the sugar-free cake was that the most popular cereal among the group was Fiber One. At least we all stayed regular.

Despite all this, the trip was a lot of fun, with most of the time taken up by hanging out at the beach and getting much more sun than my programmer/SF resident body is used to. We stayed mostly in Kailua, but did end up, at various times, in Waikiki, on the North Shore, and hiking along some really cool rocky shore whose name escapes me at the moment. There was also some shopping that happened, but I tend to fall into a mild coma at malls and outlet stores, so I can't really comment on that. We also spent a lot of time with Margie's really cute dog, Ruby, who is the only Chihuahua I've ever really liked, (sorry, every other Chihuahua I've ever met) and her parents' dog, Lily, or Mildly Retarded Lily, as we took to calling her. It sounds mean, but if you met her, you'd understand. I also did a little reading and played some more Phantom Hourglass. On the last day, we tried snorkeling, but the wind churned up too much sand underwater, and I got freaked out by the sub-1 foot visibility.

It was an interesting experience to stay in a really residential place for the trip. While I mostly appreciated the lack of touristy things, I think I'd like to come back to Hawaii some time and see and do all the stereotypically Hawaiian things -- sea turtles, shaved ice, snorkeling, surfing, lava flows, and para sailing. Hell, pass me a straw hat and a lei, and I'm there. Just be sure to leave the Fiber One at home.

I went to my 5th-year college reunion class party on Saturday, and had a lot of fun. When I decided to attend, I was afraid that I would just spend the whole night hanging out with my normal friends, which would kind of make the night a bust (sorry, friends). But I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people I saw who fell into the "I forgot about you but am really glad to see you" category, and ended up staying until 1:30am. I even remembered everyone's name, which was quite a feat for me.

On the way back, we were driving behind a clearly drunk driver on 101N. We called 911, and were promptly put on hold for a full 5 minutes, before a surly operator answered and hung up after about 10 seconds. The conversation in full:

"Hi, we're on 101N, and the person in front of us is really drunk."
"How do you know he's drunk?"
"...He's swerving all over the freeway."
"Ok. *click*."

Good thing we were only calling to tell them, "I'm driving behind a drunk driver" and not, say, "A crazed cannibalistic maniac is currently chewing off my foot, please send help."

Besides reunion activities, the weekend was good, too. Amanda and I went on an urban hike to find a birthday present for my sister (it's in the mail!), which took us around the sunset, as well as to The Haight. Sunday we made the awesome blueberry muffins again, and didn't do too much else.

In other news, congrats to Buddy for placing second in the ABS bouldering competition last Saturday! I think next time a competition rolls around, I may compete in the recreational (i.e. wussy) division.

It's been a rainy couple of days around here, which is fun, in theory, but less fun when you have a dog to walk thrice daily. Fortunately, I got Enzo a swank coat that I bought from someone at work. (Oh, come on, like you're surprised I put clothing on Enzo.) Anyway, it's been a pretty good couple of weeks. Last week I went to see The Shins, which was a lot of fun. That weekend I took Enzo down to Mountain View to his old groomer (see results in this picture), and Buddy, Babs and I climbed for a bit at Planet Granite Sunnyvale.

It's reunion weekend for the class of '02 (omgwe'reold), and I'm attending a couple (i.e. the cheapest) events. Last night I went to my freshman dorm's Mini-Reunion at Blue Chalk in Palo Alto, and it was actually really fun. There were several other dorms/organizations doing mini-reunions that night, so I saw a lot of people from other dorms, too. Hung out with some old friends, and ran into some people I wasn't expecting to see. I also discovered that I had a website lurker (yes, I'm talking to you), which is always fun. Tonight is the larger class party, which features, I'm told, an open bar and free hot dogs. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go work out how many hot dogs I have to eat in order to make my $35 worthwhile.

Uploaded to Flickr on 10th October, 2007.

Nothing like a cute dog to inspire your return to photography.

Uploaded to Flickr on 7th October, 2007.

I've been struggling for a couple of weeks with a major creativity slump. I think shooting the last wedding, and making the mistake of processing them all over the course of a couple of days really photo-burned me out. I feel like I'm starting to come out of it now (as evidenced by this photo), so hopefully it won't last much longer.

Dear San Francisco Drivers,

When I am crossing the street on a crosswalk, please do not speed towards me, slam on your brakes, then throw up your arms in exasperation as you realize that you are about to run over me and my dog. I was, as I yelled at you (twice), "IN A CROSSWALK."

You are so nice when I meet you on the street, or around the city. Why do you become an asshole when you get in your car?

...from nowhere. It's been a pretty mellow couple of weeks, so not too much to report. The past couple weekends have been nice and relaxing, with having people over for dinner, eating out, hiking, and all-around relaxing. Amanda took me to Berkeley Bowl, which is basically the most awesomest grocery store evar. Not only is their stuff really high quality, it's cheap! What a great combination. While we were there, I bought some fancy-pants organic grass-fed beef to make hamburgers, and it actually was really good, maybe even worth the extra $2/pound. It also helped that I finally figured out charcoal grilling (I know, there isn't actually much to figure out, but I'm slow), so everything turned out nicely.

Otherwise, I've been feeling in a bit of a slump in a couple different respects recently, and what do we do when we're in a slump? We buy things! That makes everything better...right?