The Twilight Report

I'm moving! Starting a new job! Not too far. About four hours away. This is not news to some. First I am going to get my car which is on the other side of the country. Thus begins my Second Great and Massive Road Trip (SGMRT) across the states (the first was just before I moved to Sydney in 2006). Over the course in the next two weeks I am going to travel through eleven states and hopefully visit some off beat and interesting places. I hope you will join me in my little adventure. I'm going to begin in the beginning where I am at right now, central New Jersey.

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Today we experienced the great outdoors by climbing Mt. Tammany.

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Just spent two weeks with my girlfriend лена in New Jersey and New York. It was wonderful. I met her family and friends, and she met my friends, most of whom still live in New York state. We are still trying to workout the whole future thing, although I'm confident that we can work things out. The shitty economy stateside is decidedly not helpful.

This is what a jerk I am. When I was in the Hudson Valley we went on a hike where the fall colour was in full force and my friend Brad said something like “This beautiful colour is our reward for having to live through the cold hard winter”, to which I responded reflexively “Speak for yourself, I'm going to the beach!”. Yay for Australia being awesome. Only, wait for it, then I started repeating this story over and over for people who were actually going to have to live through the winter in New York this year (which in my defense I had to do six times). The awesome thing about my friends is they still like me anyway.

It's weird now though because just a week ago the trees were all red and yellow and some of them were on the ground and walking to work today they were green again and fastened tightly to the trees. And to be honest, it isn't warm enough yet to go to the beach (karma). How can two places so far apart seem like home.

“I’d rather vote for a gangster than a Republican ”

—one New Jersey voter, according to the Economist.

Things left behind by humans. And rust.

From the “I feel better with him garding the coast” series

Well, my little trip down to New Jersey on Sunday was great. I visited my friend, and fellow camera geek e. I showed her all the most important things about PhotoShop that I learned from the Color Digital class that I took this summer. We went pretty fast, but I think she picked up enough for it to be useful for her. At the very end, I watched her work on this photograph:

Photograph By e

She took it while she had been in Israel this year, and I think it's a very good photograph and it gives me a warm fuzzy because she did the color and contrast adjustments using the techniques that I had showed her.

I was going to make a print of this so that I could put it up somewhere, but I asked for her permission first, since I would want anyone to check with me before reproducing one of my photographs or putting them up on the web or anything like that, but she said I could do anything I wanted with it so here it is.

Ever have a whole bunch of things that you need to get done, but you get psychologically road blocked by one of them? The completion of the one does not really bar you from completing the others, but for some reason you can't wrap your mind around the others until you get it taken care of? Well, that is sort of how I felt this morning. No longer!

At lunch today I used the $8 coupon at the cafeteria that The Management gave everyone in our department as a "thanks." I got the most expensive item I could find to make sure that the total was at least $8. Total cost to me: $0.55. Feeling that I have milked The Company for as much as I possibly could: Priceless.

On the way out I snarked a slice of apple pie. They were giving them away to celebrate our strategic alliance with Apple Computers. A friend of mine worked on the resisters in the new G5 computers! This is among the many reasons that I would love to have a G5. Given my current economic realities, that is going to have to wait.