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Phoebus got Ely and I to wake up at 6am to catch the low tide at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve (Wikipedia) near Half Moon Bay. We got there just in time for the park ranger to tell us to get as far out as possible and work our way back to shore. The place was nicely set up, a small parking lot and a short walk to the beach. Rough sands, but that’s not what we were there for. Saw lots of anemones, hermit crabs, starfish and some sea urchins. It was a fun place to jump and walk around in, take a look down at what life you just crushed underneath you and then look at the sea life still alive. And some species of starfish can have more than 5 legs.

I took some pictures, but the metering was kind of funny and it was hard to see my LCD screen as the shots were being made. I think a lot of them are a bit on the bright side.

Well… finally have achieved an end-game World of Warcraft goal. And it only took 38 other people to help. It’s been a pretty amazing experience working with and getting to know some of the best people you will ever meet online. I joined the Canucks in March of this year I think, just when they were starting to get into the Molten Core on their own as a guild. For the n00bs, World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role playing game, and Molten Core is an instanced dungeon you need 40ish people to kill everything in, the last of whom is a 200 ft tall fire demon lord named Ragnaros. Last night we killed him on our first attempt of the evening, our 4th week of trying one day per week. I am wearing the paladin legplates (looks like a skirt, well it is) I won from killing Ragnaros in this picture.

I love the Canucks. Never will you find a group of people who are more friendly yet hold the highest standards and morals and have the most concern for their fellow guildmates as these. They are of the most generous and upstanding character of any people I’ve had the opportunity to meet, and I am glad to have been a part of this phenomenon. Cheers to the Canucks!

I posted a gallery of some of the pictures I’ve put up on my walls. I love things with textures, nice lines and bright colors or color combinations that aren’t usual.

This one is nice, I like the range of various pastels you find in there, and I think they play off of each other well. The cool blues, warm greens and the purple tips offset the ruddy red background, everything being just a bit muted. This desert plant was in the Tilden Park botanical garden, which has plants and environs representing all the different ecosystems in California. I love this plant and this picture because you can really feel the influence the environment had on the whole Southwestern aesthetic.

This lichen-covered branch I also found at the botanical gardens. I did punch up the color a bit, but I love how alien it sorta looks, and how unusual the texture is.

Some other stuff is in the gallery from various trips. I’m missing the pictures from the trip to Death Valley Ben and I took a few years ago. I find myself messing around with the colors in the photos a lot usually, just to get a lot of impact from the initial impression. I ought to assign myself something where I hold back a bit and let the subtleties of a photo really slowly sink in.

>> Photos on my Walls

Brilliant! Most of the time when things get censored people *know* anyway what was meant and are able to fill in the blanks themselves. As if removing that one word would change the context, but it doesn’t. Why do people get so worked up over the language when it’s really the intent that matters?

I found myself clean shaven for the first time in a couple of weeks on Monday morning, and it seemed natural to take some pictures for some reason. So using the camera at arm’s length technique, I proceeded to make a fool of myself. I need to put myself out there more, so might as well get started now.

>> Making Faces

Since my old webhosting company was so sucky, I’ve moved to the highly recommended http://dreamhost.com and I’m pretty pleased so far. As long as they don’t do crazy things like moving my site without any notice to another server and forget to replace all my files, and as long as I’m not the one who has to notify them that their server was hacked 7 hours after the fact, I’ll be happy. And it’s cheaper here too.

Watch as I fill in the pages with random stuff!

Something to remember… I could have easily been hurt more critically. So however crappy things sometimes seem, they could be much worse. One of those Tuesdays with Morrie, appreciate your life and what you’ve got kinds of things. This head injury and the food poisoning I had were very humbling in ways. So easily hurt, so fragile. The food poisoning incident in particular, whatever it was just kicked my ass and left me lying on the ground unconscious. Felt so low, entirely powerless. There was absolutely nothing I could do but pick myself up and clean myself off. No lemonade to be made there. And you just  have to move on.

Mimi took this pic the last week of February when she was visiting me, wound up helping to take care of me as this accident happened at the start of my time off.