Garden Dog

You never know what will pop up in your garden.

Other forces of nature

What are you looking at?

Neary Lagoon sunset

Another favorite place to go walking-- Neary Lagoon.

Some specialized Christmas cards

A few Christmas card ideas, see more here.

Catching up on photos

Shot this one blind out front of Yan Flower restaurant-- stretched my arm out and pointed the camera in order to get the background I wanted. Only took two tries, yay!


Messing around inside at the same restaurant, seeing what strange things I can make the camera do. Not much retouching on this one.

Same restaurant as we were leaving, I liked the cig holder and the rocks. Never have been a smoker myself but always liked the idea of breathing smoke and fire.


I never really get tired of mallards on water.


Another scene in my general neighborhood.


Last plum on the tree, in November. This one is about thumb sized.


One of Pipa's strange behaviors is finding odd nooks for herself. She's nervous because she knows we're moving.

Round the corner from us.

Sights around Santa Cruz we'll miss

Cute little raccoon: I see you!

After dark in mid-November. That girl in the foreground is wearing a bikini. Unbelievable.
She went swimming. If that were me you'd be calling the paramedics for hypothermia. Truth be told though, it really wasn't cold out.

Sheryl is going to say again "it didn't look like that." Well, it kinda did. That's west cliff seen from the wharf at sunset.



Maybe it looked more like this. Hard to say at the moment, how it really looked.
All the photos are clickable for a larger view.

Pelican portrait

Relocating, looking for a new home.

Sheryl and I are getting ready to move by December first. We've known for a long time that our current home was temporary, and now it's time to go. Quite oddly, my brother who lives in Yorba Linda California, just had to evacuate his home with his wife and two kids to get out of the path of the Orange County wildfire. I don't even know if they've been able to return home yet, but the fire seems to have bypassed their immediate neighborhood.

Anyway, we ARE leaving and it's not my favorite thing to deal with all my stuff ! Even though over the course of several moves a lot of it has already been pared down.

Unless a better offer appears, we'll be going to Arizona. They say a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. At the moment what I notice is that Sheryl and I have slightly different ideas about what the first step is. She's already started packing and I'm still working on "theory", but my theory is helping us to avoid some of the chaos, we both agree about that.

We do indeed hope for changes beyond relocating. Sheryl and I already put out a vision statement here and also here. But the condensed version is that we're looking to team up for mutual benefit with other like-minded individuals; moving our spiritual practice forward and beyond what it has been, same goes for our art and photography and of course Sheryl's perfume business, Mama Love Products. We're both authors too, but Sheryl has books currently available here and none of my writing is currently for sale anywhere.

Cat looking back

Took this shot by special request from Sheryl. I think I like it.

Sheryl at twilight

A nice shot of Sheryl Karas, my partner, taken at twilight at the local nature preserve.

May magic fill your days

May magic fill your days and sweet visions blanket your nights.

Three photos, one walk.

"What's all this about meditation?" The sequel. It's nothing, really it's nothing. But then again, it's everything if you're still enough to see it.

You are my lucky star, my lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky star.

This is the actual, authentic view through rose colored glasses. Featuring an actual rose doing the colouring.

Evening walk to the wharf

Walked out on the pier and got this shot of the lighthouse in the distance after the sun went down. Sheryl made the immediate comment after seeing several shots of mine "It doesn't look like that in reality!" and I instantly answered "reality is for suckers." I keep trying to tell her that.

Cartography: some cool maps of election results

A good friend sent me a link to some election results map breakdowns. Some pretty interesting stuff here.
I was surprised to see that the comparison between the electoral college map and the map comparing actual populations are pretty close-- but not exact. Some smaller States get a priority higher than their actual populations. Lots of cool variations on the theme. It's interesting enough just to see the different population densities of this country.

Rather proud of my country right now

We're still evolving towards the future.


This from the Los Angeles Times:

"...Obama was the first Democrat to receive more than 50% of the popular vote since Jimmy Carter in 1976. He is the first senator elected to the White House since John F. Kennedy in 1960.

With most U.S. precincts tallied, the popular vote was 52.3% for Obama and 46.4% for John McCain. In the electoral college, Obama was the projected winner of 349 votes to 147 for Republican McCain with three states -- North Carolina, Georgia and Missouri -- still to be decided.

In his victory, Obama also captured states that are generally Republican such as Indiana and Virginia, which hadn't supported a Democratic candidate in 44 years. Ohio and Florida, key to President Bush's twin victories, also went for Obama, as did Pennsylvania, where McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, spent much of the final days of the campaign..."

Here in Santa Cruz, about 78% voted for Barack Obama. Sheryl and I have made it no secret that we're liberal democrats. But at the same time I think it's very important that we respect each other for our differences as well as our sameness-- and to do not fall prey to judging each other where we might disagree.

Here's a map also from the L.A. times about proposition 8. It should come up as an interactive map showing who voted for what county by county. It's pretty interesting. The story isn't over yet. I don't like to see what I consider to be unconstitutional propositions put up for a vote, and I am a little surprised that it went this way in California, my home state. Gay Marriage is legal in Vancouver, BC. It's legal in Connecticut now. Legal in Massachusetts-- I don't think anybody is being harmed by equal treatment under the law.

A fun portrait session with Dr. Steven Stewart

It was my great pleasure to work with Dr. Steven Stewart, his staff and wonderful volunteers who did some modeling for us. Two out-takes from the shoot are pictured above. Click on them for a larger view.

His office is at 3811 Portola Dr, just past 38th on the way to 41st. Across the street from Big Creek Lumber. Green "Back In Shape Chiropractic" sign out front. Office number is 462-3550
Nice guy, it was fun.