jonathan’s photos |
one per day, from my cellular telephone. |
this morning my parents picked us up from the airport and drove us... well, all over north and south carolina. i will spare you all the details except these: the drive was complicated by a confusing highway system; and we arrived in charlotte before midmorning and did not reach my parents' house until evening. it was a long, good day.
today we left seattle to visit my parents in south carolina. our flight departed at 11:55pm on a friday, which must have been an unpopular time to fly because the airport was virtually abandoned. it was like something from the twilight zone: a smiling security officer ushered us through an empty tsa lane, we sat in relative quiet at the gate, and only the late arrival of an extremely loud child broke the spell.
this is my early birthday present! it is a camera lens. it's a 35mm (50mm equivalent) fixed focal length, which basically means that it doesn't zoom in or out and it has a natural or "normal" perspective: nothing is going to look bigger or smaller in the photo than it really is. some early art photographers--henri cartier-bresson, for instance--used only this kind of lens. i am not so foolish as to think that equipment imparts competency or creativity, but i am pretty excited about its potential nonetheless.
you have seen perhaps three or four photos of the day that were taken at this community-supported farm. today was our last vegetable pickup of the year: beets, leeks, carrots, lettuce, squash, and pumpkins. i will miss the rambling newsletters, the children in the small gardens, and the hand-lettered signs everywhere. we loved being a part of the root connection this year and have already signed up, along with my sister and brother in law, for next summer's weekly harvests. we recommend them if you like local, organic, and healthy food!
time was at a premium this evening, so last night i did the prep work for dinner and put the ingredients into little white bowls. i have seen them do this on cooking shows: in order to skip past the tedium of dicing an entire squash or smashing individual cloves of garlic, they simply pull a white bowl from off-camera, announce its contents ("and now we're adding half a cup of cinnamon..."), and proceed with the interesting part of the recipe. today, cooking mainly by dumping these little white bowls at the right times, i briefly felt like a television chef.
tonight we went shopping for maternity clothes! we went to a couple of places and had some real success at "destination maternity", a little shop in bellevue that has items from several big-name maternity brands. shopping together for maternity clothes is pretty fun. these places are not designed for men (aforementioned shop's men's room is also its janitor closet and supply room) so i often wind up doing things like reading "the 51 secrets of motherhood!" while kelly is changing. she's showing unmistakably now and looks absolutely lovely in her new clothes.
in my family, squash is not a staple food. it was made into a pie or bread or used in the occasional vegetable mix, but eating it on its own was not something we did much--so i was slightly justified if i lacked enthusiasm when kelly suggested we have squash one evening. it turns out that her family roasts them with butter, sugar, and cinnamon in the cavity, and this makes them soft, sweet, and basically a dessert. tonight we enjoyed this delicacy together after a weekend apart. it was delightful.
the redmond saturday farmer's market runs from may through october, which means that it is quickly drawing to a close. today i went to the market near closing time, and the merchants were already putting away their wares. the customers were few--deterred, perhaps, by the erratic but torrential rains--and didn't seem to be buying much. we'll be out of town next weekend so i expect this will be the last visit of the year. see you in may, farmer's market!
today at the office there was a fundraiser that involved a rock band competition. but because we are all nerds, it was actually a "rock band, the video game" competition. this is the group that represented the access team: the flannel zombies! they dressed and acted the part. makeup was involved. the best part: after lurching onto the stage, the song they picked to perform was a pearl jam classic titled "i'm still alive".
every year at about this time i notice halloween decorations at the office and think "whoa, here come the holidays!" and then i walk into a store and see that they have proceeded directly past thanksgiving and gone straight on to christmas, without passing go or collecting two hundred dollars.
hi, i'm jonathan! i am a software engineer and amateur photographer living in redmond, washington (you may, correctly, guess the large corporation that pays my mortgage).
i post one photo here every day, which documents my life, or my friends' lives, or what i ate for lunch. these photos are taken with an aging cellular telephone and completely untouched.
think of it as a stream-of-consciousness sort of thing.
