stumbling my way through a digital life
so buster and i have been home with the family celebrating the holidays—xmas for me, hanukkah for buster (he’s jewish).
after more than a week of “holiday cheer” i can tell that buster is ready to get back to everyday life.
this dog thrives on normalcy.
if you question my ability to understand his most complex of emotions, look at this shot and tell me it’s not written all over his face.
Canon 50D :: 50mm :: f1.8 :: ISO 200
that dog whisperer guy doesnt have shit on me.
the economic downturn has hit us hard at 1LS. this is probably due to the fact that each day i due the following:
1. wake up, slam the alarm in anger…but try to remind myself that i’m the luckiest person in the known universe.
2. help buster dig himself out of a pile of blankets at the foot of the bed
3. stumble to the bathroom and look in the mirror
4. splash cold water on my face
5. close my eyes to remember how fortunate and beautiful my life is…
6. realize that this day of med school will cost me a pretty-penny in medloans.
7. remind myself that knowledge is power
8. have GI distress over point #6
9. head back into the bedroom to once again try to coax buster out of bed
10. give up on waking buster
so it’s xmas time and that means buying presents for those who are important in our lives. this year, no one told xmas that we’re in the middle of the biggest-economic-fuck-you since the great depression.
to help remedy this, i’m cutting back slightly on material things and placing more emphasis on the “personal touch“. that being said, i’ve been trying to get buster to cooperate w/ me for a proper xmas photo that would be suitable for mugs, calendars, mousepads…you know…all that kind of tacky shit.
after almost 20mins of wrestling with him in front of photobooth, i decided to say screw it and turned on the IR effect and shot the absurd.
if you know me and are expecting a gift, then HAPPY XMAS…hope you like buster too!
so this last shot is my favorite, because i caught buster mid-nose-lick.
in all seriousness, my xmas shopping is complete and i think i’ve made very nice choices for each and every one of you b/c you make my best life such a wonderful place.
p.s. i’m pissed off b/c i’ve been growing out my ’stache for the past four days and i still dont look like jt.
p.p.s do you have any idea how weird it felt doing a google image search for the above “jt” link? the things i do for this blog…
it wasn’t until June 2004 that our blogfather, tony pierce, taught me how to blog properly. counting back to my first post in 2003, i’ve published 1,248 posts. their content ranged from the absurdly personal, the sophomorically creative and nothing more than digital dribble.
at the end of each year, i like to go through my year’s worth of archives and see how my posts are holding up and what (if anything) i can do to crank up the awesome in the future. welcome to the state of the blog address 2008.
to mark this occasion, i always re-read tony’s masterpiece, “how to blog” and see where i’m fucking up. even though his list is over four-years-old or (28 in internet years) the principles hold up even if the referenced tech may be growing old.
(i’ll pause while you re-read the commandments.)
perhaps it’s just nostalgia, but each year that i look back on my blog i find less and less that i LOVE. actually, now as that sentence appears on my screen i know that 2008’s blog-melancholy is actually due to 2 things:
1. the pretty girl and i enjoy our privacy: she was THE defining theme of 2008 and b/c not everyone who visits this corner of the internet has my best interests in mind, we purposely kept our private life private. let this be a lesson to us all, not everyone with an internet connection is a nice person. in actuality, this problem only exists b/c i broke the blogfather’s rule #5:
2. it was in 2008 that people i actually knew in real life and who read my blog started signing up on twitter and facebook. between these two services, i was literally micro-blogging myself out of content. a few years back, my now 1,978 twitter updates would have sat in my head (just below the faux-hawk) and became a post about my wildly-entertaining-life. now, at the end of the day, i find little utility in publishing a post that would be nothing more than an expanded version of my daily tweets (twats?).
add to this the fact, that my less-tech-savy friends view the internet via the facebook-walled-garden means that my content was being spread-thin and this year, 1LS took the hit.
moving forward in 2009, i’m going to approach the daily-chronicling of my existence with a new outlook. no longer will i assume that you are visiting 1LS b/c you’re looking for something new that you didnt hear about in a tweet (twat?) but b/c you dig awesomeness…the kind of awesomeness that i want to tell you about…the kind of awesomeness that only a random photo of buster-the-dog can fulfill.
that being said, i’m glad that i was alive and blogging in 2008 because: 1.) i got to chronicle how amazing it was to follow barack obama along his journey to the presidency, 2.) how much better it is to wake up in the morning engaged to the pretty girl and 3.) how incredible it is to track buster’s every movement w/ photography equipment capable of much more elaborate endeavors.
for the record, here are my favorite posts of 2008—not because they were well-written (they weren’t)—but b/c they made 2008 what it was. if i were forced to choose my favorite, i would probably pick “our choices are half-chance…” b/c it was the most personal…and that’s what moving forward in 2009 will be about.
thank you for being around for all of these and stop by in the new year for more fun.
“Buster in the Sun” January 14, 2008
“The End is Near” January 31, 2008
“Sexy Smartness” February 26, 2008
“eBay’s Nip Slip” April 29, 2008
“America’s Disneyland” May 29, 2008
“Waiting 50 Years for Marriage” June 16, 2008
“I’d Like to Have a Crack at Her Code” August 21, 2008
“LeRoi Moore :: 1961 - 2008″ August 19, 2008 (We Miss You, LeRoi)
“Everyone Chill” September 22, 2008
“our choices are half-chance but the drive was good” October 27, 2008
peace and love in 2009…but especially peace.
there’s no way I can prepare you for the hilarity contained in this video:
via jimray
whenever buster visits his best friend, chloe-the-dog, he literally plays her into exhaustive submission. below is photographic proof:
i definitely know how chloe-the-dog feels.
first world confession time:
i find it hard to function if my awesome-socal-flat is messy. i keep a rotating to-do list of chores that ensure that all aspects of my home (kitchen, bathroom, etc) are clean and reasonably germ-free.
that being said, i am fortunate to have a dishwasher that keeps my various kitchenwares clean and (acceptably) sterile.
my lone crutch in cleanliness is emptying the dishwasher.
so, today i confess to taking clean dishes from the dishwasher, using them and then placing them in the sink. when the time arises that i need clean dishes, i add the dirty contents of the sink to the set of clean dishes and wash everything all over again.
there are random jars and dishes that have probably been washed 20x without ever being used.
*phew*
…much better.
myself—and everyone else using RoadRunner in SoCal—are having crazy internet outages this week.
most likely, said outages occur when you really, really need to access your facebook bank account.
when you get an error message like the one below, there’s a decent chance that you’re the one with the problem…not google.
i know this b/c i learned my troubleshooting skills at a state college…and also basket-weaving…but especially the troubleshooting stuff.
so my sister is the funniest person i know. currently, she’s finishing up lawschool b/c she’s a smarty-pants and also b/c she knows how much legal work future-me will provide her.
in addition, I’m re-posting this because you don’t spend enough time going through my archives from 2005 and b/c it’s december 7th and i’m not funny anymore.
honestly, how many more reasons do you need?
Originally published, Dec 7th, 2005:
“you’re gonna be a part of it”
Sister: i think for christmas we should all buy each other round-trip tickets to NY
Me: yeah that would be awesome…we could go in February when it’s cold and snowy
Sister: we can also rent a car or take the train to Boston for a day…
Sister: i cant wait to see your face when you see the eifell tower…wait.
Me: or the louvre
Sister: or the liberty bell
Me: or the alamo
Sister: yeah or the place where elvis is buried…may he rest in peace
Me: elvis is in heaven with grandpa
i saw this video on sarah’s blog and felt like it was made just for me and just for today.
too many times in my life, i’ve fallen victim to the tragedy of living for the goal instead of for the moment. in fact, the biggest mistakes i’ve made in the past 31 years can almost always be attributed to not living a waking life.
today, i find myself in an all-too-familiar situation, but this time it’s in my professional life.
my goal moving forward and for the immediate present is to be here, singing and dancing.
if you see me doing otherwise, kick me in the face.
RSS Feed
Twitter
Flickr
Disqus
Facebook
Google Reader Shared Items
