Muse 2010- Oakland Oracle Arena, CA
–
OMG guys. So I saw Muse a month ago and took about 500 pictures. Roughly 160 of those were decent enough to share. Now, the majority of these are Matt Bellamy’s ass, because we had seats behind the stage and Muse did that whole 360-degree stage thingy they’re doing for this ‘Resistance’ tour. But honestly, I think I got some pretty good ones.
With a few exceptions, the best of the batch I put on Flickr, located here. The ones I’m posting here I also think are great, particularly in other ways… but for the really awesome ones you should really check out the Flickr set.
Pacific Northwest Tour Part 2: Humboldt Redwoods State Park (2007)
(taken by Ken)
Here’s day 2 of our Pacific Northwest tour back in 2007. I’m starting to add my best photos from this trip to this Flickr set, so go there for more :).
[…]
(more…)
Pacific Northwest Tour Part 1: Bodega Bay and Arrival at Humboldt Redwoods State Park (2007)
Back in 2007, Ken and I decided to go on a road trip from Northern California to Washington. We didn’t go as far as we liked, but got some great camping in at some beautiful spots, including Mt. St. Helens National Monument. Mt. St. Helens has special meaning for me, because it erupted not long after I was born. I know that’s true for perhaps a thousand other people. But it’s also true that I’ve always been known for bringing the disaster, drama, and horrible weather to any party. 😉
I’ve just got around to sorting and uploading the pics from this trip. Here’s stuff from the first day, when we started out with lunch at Bodega Bay and drove up to Humboldt Redwoods State Park for our first night camping:
Tennessee Valley Trail, Golden Gate National Park, California (2008)
This is the first trip I took with my new digital camera (Canon Rebel XT) back in early 2008. Went with Ken and some of his work buddies. The Tennessee Valley Trail is pretty great. You walk a relatively flat road until you get to Muir Beach:
gilroy garlic festival 2007
way back a couple of years ago we decided to try out the gilroy garlic festival. now, i am a huge fan of garlic, and i know that farmer’s markets and food festivals ought to be really promising out here since this is such a big “ag” area with likely many local growers and sellers.
so i was more than a little disappointed, i guess, when we arrived and it was just your typical generi-fair, complete with 50% of the space being taken over by fried food stands that didn’t even really have anything to do with garlic. and the fairgrounds were just filthy. i think at one point i stepped on a sanitary napkin. :((((((((((((((((((((((((
anyway, here’s some pics.
nosh with sara and karl beforehand
we can never resist a good couples portrait
y’know, in my day we didn’t have these newfangled “trip bus”es. we had to trip all on our own. and we had to buy our own shrooms. andwe had to walk uphill both ways to get to the shroom store.
karl shows off his fancy-pantsy google shirt.
sara examines what is likely the best thing at the garlic festival.
and then we all fondle a giant tiger.
this is what we call an art series.
srsly? srsly, 7/11?
lake solano
we went out to lake solano for a late morning swim a few weeks ago.
we decided the lake was a little freezing… (ken took this)
(ken took this)
so i took a bunch of pictures OF the lake in about thigh-high water instead.
the “tadpole salad bar”
i made ken pose, but he won’t let me post my favorite picture from the shoot.
there was an abundance of wildlife there, including:
peacock family!
goose!
goosestep
here i am trying to pretend i have food in my hand. the peachicks were pretty precocious (sorry for lame alliteration– it was unintentional) (ken took this)
not that brave though.
they must get it from their parents.
i don’t think i’ve ever seen them do this before!
showing off my new birdy feather (which my hair rather freakily kept swallowing up. i feel like marge simpson sometimes)!
little guy was nice enough to pose for like .00000001 second
we took a break to eat, hoping the lake would warm up a bit later.
ken brought goat cheese!
food is sensed on shore, and the march of the waterfowl begins.
i guess you can’t really march very well on water, but you get my point.
after lunch we still found the lake freezing, so took a small hike around. i took pictures of trees.
bamboo was found.
i think we’re lost.
nope, here’s more of the lake!
at some point i decided i was crazy and went in up to my neck. it’s not so bad once your nervous system shuts down.
(ken took this)
(ken took this)
lake self-portraits
we went across the road to the campgrounds to see if the lake was any warmer there (my wishful thinking). we saw many amusing signs though.
that explains gidget’s morning routine!
i think anya made this sign.
kind of ridiculous.
san francisco, crazy taxi style
we got to sf hungry, so we stopped at the first indian/pakistani restaurant we saw. damn good food, and cheap.
sara and fluffy hate having their pictures taken, hee
cryptic messages in the decor
everyone suddenly decided it was time to call dad.
on to shopping on valencia street! pictures weren’t allowed inside paxton gate (so you’ll just have to go there yourself). i was afraid to take more than one picture inside 826 valencia, the “pirate store”– i figured the fish theatre would be discreet enough:
i didn’t take any pictures inside good vibrations either, so this picture of fluffy’s ass will just have to do:
we did ham it up in the ADS hat store though.
it is scary how good this hat looks on ken.
(taken by ken)
we even made karl participate (i picked out his hat):
fluffy turns his back on his true nature:
but ken embraces it:
someone in this town is a bigger geek than all of us put together:
coit tower is apparently without an interesting history. it’s just some tower built by some modern-day rich person.
there it is! says ken.
i’m trent reznor! says karl
coit had a lot of windows.
and many windows had coins on the ledge. it is human nature to put money someplace where it can never be used.
now we’re just trying to leave the tower.
on our way back to mtview i took a few pictures out the car windows:
at the sushi restaurant, ken plays with his food:
i take his wasabi beast and raise him a cactuar!
isae vancouver
getting there
got picked up for the airport at richard’s house, where i got to finally meet his silkies (rescued from the ucdavis picnic day hatching exhibit):
actually one of those silkies is really a bantam cross.
(more chick pics here, here, and here.)
we flew alaska airlines. i was the only one out of the group to notice that each overhead luggage bin had a poem written on it like so:
(more overhead poems
here, here, here, and here. i think i’m going to make a musical out of them.)
seattle tac art can get kind of weird:
but i liked this one. these are meant to be birds…
and they’re made up of fish!
of course i didn’t notice til they pointed it out to me that we were taking up the entire shuttle bus to the car rental agency:
so the hotel we were staying in was like one of those suite dorm deals. everyone got their own room and there was a common bathroom, kitchen, and living room. not to mention a balcony. the view was great, although this picture is more of my breasts:
the kitchen was suspiciously large. it had two huge refrigerators and cupboards big enough to fit richard inside:
it’s almost some kind of artistic womb symbolism.
we toured some island where i took obsessively large amounts of pictures, mainly of birds: 
we came across some totem poles:
i still can’t tell the difference between ravens and crows, but this guy was photogenic anyways:
we found a small bit of beach:
lost in the “woods”:
statue outside the aquarium, which we didn’t have time to explore:
off the island, local wildlife:
on campus, i found a few quirky things:
black squirrels!
in the women’s bathroom:
someone was really excited about this i guess:
i took a few pictures of people from our group, but not many. the majority were taken before and after a painfully delicious catered dinner our first conference day.
lillian volunteered to pose in the stones for me!
gina and susie!
yeun and gena!
gina ina gena lillian!
richard the mothman
richard the barfly
back home we go. we stopped at an authentic roadhouse for dinner. chris and i were pleased– the rest? not sure. chris took this for me since it was in the men’s bathroom:
here i am alone in the motel room near the seatac:
maja’s cat awaits her return!
good note to end on.
folsom lake excursion 2!: pictures
so here are the pictures i promised last week or whenever that was. since i took two cameras, these aren’t all of them. i still have a few pictures left on the 35 mm roll, and hey, i still haven’t even gone through all my older 35 mm negatives to see what they look like, and that was from over the winter. so it may be a while before you see my marvelous (i hope) jackrabbit pictures…
the famous mordor caterpillar! i still haven’t looked around to see what these guys actually are. but they were EVERYWHERE. it was actually sort of eerie and i’m sure we stepped on more than a few.
there was a lizard on this rock that i got with the 35mm. we’ll see if it turns out.
looks much cooler in person
we had entertained the notion of going swimming, but i don’t think folsom lake is generally a “swimming” sort of lake. certainly not this area!
i always consider stuff like this my homage to stark or la_magdalena or kalipest from livejournal. it’s not really my style but i love it. i don’t think i really have a style at all. or do i?
winchester mystery house pics, at long last!
hey sara and fluffy (and to some extent ken)– remember when i said i would put up the october 2005 winchester mystery house pictures really fast compared to how long i usually take to put up pictures?
haha. suckers.
but yes, here they finally are.
for those unschooled in the horrors and wonders that comprise the winchester legend (and for those that want to see even more pics, behind the scenes), go here.
there was this odd little room floating off by itself that we never got to visit. i often wondered about it (due to the nature of the house you tend crisscross back and forth a bunch, so we passed it 2-3 times)
so the three general options for the nonsensical architecture are a) mrs winchester really hated ghosts; b) mrs winchester really hated her staff; c) mrs winchester was very bad at planning. i like b), but then you knew i would.
another “door to nowhere”
13 sink holes!
13 candles! (you’re just going to have to trust me on this- 6 arms, 2 on each arm, and one in the middle to make 13)
are there 13 spires too? i can’t remember. probably not; it seems likely from this picture that mrs winchester was a spire addict.
there were a ton of these “pseudo-courtyards” that didn’t make much sense
some of the pseudo-courtyards even had statues in them.
do you think her (few and far between, i’m sure) dinner guests waited to use their bathrooms at home?
i always knew i’d get a picture of sara in the shower someday…
fluffy and ken are too tall for this tour, apparently
do you know what is going on here? cupid is being attacked by pond animals. that is what is going on here.
spooky! and here i was just trying to get a picture of the stained glass. cosmic supernatural forces obviously were blocking my camera.
ok, these must be due to supernatural forces. i don’t know what these are all about.
as we left we realized a delorean club convention was going on. how cool is that? i want to join the delorean club.
sometimes i’m pretty sure only 2 people read this
but here are some nice pictures anyway.
squaw valley is a really beautiful place.
a little photoshoppy exaggeration; the skiing wasn’t this doomful.
i’ve started taking the pigs out in a pair, now that i’ve gotten more used to them and they’ve gotten more used to me (they still hate me though).
they do this a lot though. that’s stark hiding under scully as best she can.
and the cat came back…
family photo op!
the buddha could have been holding pigs instead of his own belly.
ken bonds with them too, of course 🙂
they’ve gotten way into certain vegetables, which makes me (and them) happy. they’re my first tier compost heap. stark goes insane for carrots and scully loves banana and seems very happy with spinach. and as you can see, they both like to eat melon. at the same time.
photo op ended when i scared them. this is a common scene here.
now that gidget is on summer vacation, she does more than just lie around and annoy me, you know:
she is also into literature. the book she’s reading now is called “achieving human understanding.”
and then there’s yoga.
and finally, patrolling the backyard.
the wisteria flowers are gone (along with the lovely scent and all the bees), but here’s a few shots of them i managed to get.
lotr cowtown
amusing chalk drawings (not ours)
a scale model of orthanc appeared nearby later in the day.
after a long day standing there and looking ominous, orthanc likes to go out for a good brewski.
i fight crime (witness the shiny new dagger)!
sadly, no colorful bras were bought.
sauron was kind of short. so was his weapon; i slipped it some enhancements.
little things like this made the festival worth it.
this is like, gandalf’s cousin or something.
?
!
i can’t believe some people still call them freedom fries.
even more pictures here!
FRIDAY FUN PIC
i’ve been busy webprepping my digicam photos, so here is an older picture from last summer.
this one is from that horrid rennie experience in sf. it’s really for dave, who doesn’t even read this blog (i think)
