Eleventh: The Last Day before the Last Day

More stuff from SF! Instead of scouring my brains trying to write some captions, I've decided to put a line of a song I know to describe each one. Hopefully, they'll make sense.

"Upside down, I'll find the things they say just can't be found" - Jack Johnson

"Damn, it feels good to be a gangster..." - Geto Boys
P.S. that's such an awesome hairdo

"You looked behind you to smile back at me" - John Mayer

Tenth: Chilly San Francisco

So on Tuesday, I was out of school for a field trip to the SF zoo with my AP Bio class. As much fun as I remember my childhood trips to visit Shamu in San Diego being, the zoo was actually pretty...dull.
1. Tuesday morning/midday? Very, very empty place.
2. We had these packets we were rushing to finish.
3. They should provide scooters because then my aching feet wouldn't want to secede from my legs.
Still, I brought along a camera for me and Simsters to snap some photos with, and we ended up taking some very cool ones. All photos credited to me or her.

P.S. So animals generally have these latin-ish sounding scientific names (i.e. lion is Panthera leo). It turns out that the scientific name for a gorilla is gorilla gorilla gorilla.

Monkey contemplating the meaning of life (it's not 42).
Giraffes do yoga, too.

Ninth: Three Takes on a Saturday Evening

A few more photos I snapped this past weekend in Santa Cruz:
Simple evidence that birds also enjoy long, meaningful walks on the beach.

The area on the right side of the photo is where we played "sticks": basically, you grab a stick and try to stick it in the sand as close to the ocean as possible when the tide rescinds (congratulations to Paul for winning).

Funky things to do with PhotoShop (check out the corner of sky blue sky).

Eighth: Two Takes on a Windy Sunday Morning

Over the weekend, karma finally began kicking in for me as I headed down to Santa Cruz/Aptos to spend Saturday night and Sunday morning in a few seaside villas - courtesy Steffo and her generous family. I'll keep updating with little snippets of what went on down there (e.g. raucous games of birthday mafia and some quality movie programming), but for now I'll make things quick.

I was fiddling with the D200 a fellow journalist happened to bring down for some photo opportunities, and can safely say that I took 200 horrible photos and 2 that I actually like:


The best thing by far about the villas was the proximity to the ocean; you could take a 15-second walk from the door and reach a small cliff that looked over the beach and the entire Santa Cruz coastline. Snapping these photos was a very satisfying way to kick off my Sunday morning.

Seventh: Music Men

I tend to think I'm familiar with every corner of my house, but just when I fall into this state of I've-seen-all-there-is-to-see, something like my brother's clarinet case comes up and proves me wrong. Rummaging through an upstairs cabinet, I came across the little box and was flooded with memories of when he used to go around the house toot-tooting.

During the same period of time while I was figuring out how to put the thing together (it came in 5 different parts), I decided to edit the photo of the clarinet to remind me of mid-20th century movie shots. I think I failed, but feel free to make your own judgment.

The piano where my brother, my sister, and I have all been trained... to hate piano. My brother's definitely the most accomplished, whereas my sister is still taking lessons and complains regularly about having to practice. I quit the piano in 4th grade, though I somewhat regret it now that I listen to a lot of songs where piano plays a major role in the instrumentals.

I was tempted to leave off with this picture of my guitar neck and "'nuff said," but I think that I've become used to idolizing the instrument and its related music without really explaining what drew/draws me to it. So the story:
After quitting piano in 4th grade, I began listening to a lot more pop punk bands, namely Green Day and Blink 182. As any addict of pop punk music knows, you can't listen to songs like "All the Small Things" and "Basket Case" without trying to air guitar or tap your feet to the drum beat. Eventually, my obsession with air-emulating such bands turned into a desire to learn to play guitar. 4-5ish years later, I find it's a great way to project how you feel, what you see, and what you think through a language as universal as music - something that can cross boundaries like nothing else. There's a song for basically every scenario:

Queen's Hammer to Fall - pump-up for a game/competition
Tom Petty's Free Fallin' - rainy California days
Journey's Faithfully/Jackson Browne's Running On Empty - long car rides
John Mayer's In Your Atmosphere - anytime you're in LA
Weezer's Say It Ain't So - under house arrest
Black Eyed Peas' Where is the Love - any events about saving the world (which we have a lot of)
Hamster Song - wanting a good laugh but secretly enjoying it

Sixth the...out of rhymes

I don't think I ever really appreciated candles until we had a blackout.

As I was diligently beginning my homework on Monday night, the lights began to emit an eerie buzz. Flicker on, flicker off, and just like that, our world was plunged into darkness (this sounds more disastrous than it actually was).
My sister's away at Science Camp this entire week, so the normal cries of "ARRGH NOT A BLACKOUT!!!" I'd hear from her room weren't present. Instead, I blindly inched my way downstairs and found my parents lighting a few candles. These lifesavers helped me to squint painfully at the text If on a winter's night a traveler and 3 pages of my biology textbook before I collapsed back into my chair, massaging my wounded eyes and nursing a minor headache.
Seeing as it was a little past 9, I didn't want to risk taking a "nap" that would knock me out cold for the night and possibly make me miss the highly anticipated return of the power. Instead, I sat in the dark living room playing guitar and making up rules for a new game I've invented called What to Do When the World is Plunged Into Darkness.
Afterthought: the power came back on at 2 AM.

I've been thinking I should take a picture of the funky wire/spiral/leaf art project my sister brought home from class one day, and here it is. She's actually dressed up the chandelier with a lot of trinkets (like tiny stuffed animals wedged in here and there), but the best thing by far is the Funky Monkey:

P.S. Happy birthday to a certain young lady, turning 13? 14? Can't really remember

Fifth that Essay about the Monomyth

What did I do with my weekend?

I just wanted to open with that for a little dramatic effect. From the picture, you might be tempted to guess that I spent my weekend flapping my arms trying to fly, but you would be dead wrong. In fact, I spent a good deal of Friday and a bit of Saturday plastic-skating on Davis field. The above is my favorite picture from Saturday night of me trying to jump on ice (credits to Steffo), which I just spent a dickens of a time trying to edit so that it resembled the freeze-frame shots at the end of movies like Rocky. If you don't know what I mean, simply imagine that you've just watched a movie about a young, charming amateur ice-skater who aspires to go pro and woo the lady of his dreams. The film ends with rapturous success and this freeze-frame of him doing his "signature jump" while his best friend and supporting character skates in the distance. Perfect ending, huh? I can already hear the Academy, Wikipedia writers, and Rotten Tomatoes singing its praise.

^ I realize that all that was incredibly corny, but 1. I actually spent quite a bit of time editing this photo 2. I happen to like it a lot 3. It's a very cool photo 4. No amount of corniness can change that

My court happens to have about 8 berry (I think they're berry) trees that bloom each spring. They seem to bloom rapidly each year, erupting in a fireworks show of pinks and purples before the seasons start to shift and the trees turn a darkish purple (which isn't nearly as nice-looking). I've been telling myself for a while that I should take a photo of them in bloom but hadn't really gotten around to it until this year. I actually didn't get them at their peak; there's a certain point when they are nearly covered with pink blossoms and artistically dashed with purple here and there. Still, they make for a nice setting when I go for jogs.