Modern Guilt
Sometimes I love modern times (as much as Bob Dylan’s album) and other times I go through a bout of modern guilt (a la Beck’s album). After an exhaustingly long day with no rest in sight, I’ve almost lost my bearings. The pace of my days is sometimes too oppressive and I need to take some deliberate steps to tranquilize the effects of modernity. My day consisted of coffee & scone, grading, bus transportation, buying plane tickets, writing an essay, coffee & Luna bar, attending class, trail mix, abandoning hot coffee due to lack of WiFi, recording an interview, photographing hands, bus transportation, research and consequent over-saturation! As I was d

Gif gift!
Since I’m so horrible at taking action shots and I put my friend through the physical exertion and social embarrassment of re-taking this jumping picture over and over… well, I felt compelled to do SOMEthing useful with them. The best solution seemed to be creating my very first animated GIF!!  That makes me smile. Friend, this is my formal apology for making you work out in front of all those people! I hope this simple animation makes up for it, enjoy!   

Double the pleasure
Until yesterday, this was the closest I’d ever come to seeing a double rainbow: You’re not mistaken, you’re indeed looking at blobs of colorful diesel on the street. I’ve been taking photos of these things for a while now, trying to capture the most beautiful one for a book I’m compiling called Pretty Ugly Things: stuff that is normally visually unappealing (trash, factories, diesel fuel,

A whole new world
Pseudo-camping on the Oregon coast was a sensory treat and I saw some stuff I’d never seen before. First, a mini version of the Loch Ness monster: And also the crowded world of tiny little sea creatures, all trying to get a piece of this rock as if it were Tokyo:

MMMmm, hedonismmm
Not a word usually used to describe the life of a graduate student, but lately, I’ve been doing my darnedest to break this stereotype. In between writing and grading papers, doing research, teaching classes and trying to keep my head from exploding, I’ve been managing to squeeze in a heck of a lot of fun. I had to make a hard decision yesterday: is it ok to go out of town for 3 work-less weekends in a row? San Francisco, Oregon coast, New York City, eek! My colleagues might scoff at the idea but I’ve decided YES. More than just ok, it’s totally the right thing to do. While I might regret this decision Sunday night at 10pm as I’m frantically catchi