Boo

Surpised? I'm still here. Promise.

I'm going to skip the banter and get to the photos, mostly because I'm weirdly tired today. Didn't sleep last night, and it's showing.

I shot the SGA debate on Tuesday night. Couple highlights here ...



Jump over to my other blog (it's somewhere in a side panel) to check out my other blog for a couple stitches I've been working on, including one of the debates.

Ciao for now.

Yeah, I'm still kicking

... though some of you may wish otherwise.

Been a tad busy getting back into Athens, trying to submerge myself back into the student culture and mindset. First couple weeks were a massive pain in the butt: I kept getting worried about not having a paycheck, got too bored a couple times, got too apathetic a couple times, debauched a few times too many that first week, felt a little neurotic about things for a while, and such other minor hiccups.

But I have been shooting some. And here's the evidence.



I have shot something other than just "cute" photos, but those are on a different hard drive. I'll get back to posting more news-like photos soon enough, I hope, though I'll warn anybody looking for visuals that I'm going to be focusing on my writing this semester. I need to that into a better shape than it currently holds.

Till later, y'all.

Blondes on his mind

This is an old story -- heck, I shot it back in November -- but I've been a little rushed on things lately, as ...

a) I'm moving back to Georgia on Wednesday.
b) Wednesday also happens to be my last day at the internship.
c) It's friggin' Christmas.

... so I'm going to post this and then That'll Be It For A While. As in, I probably won't be post for a week or two (or three) as I make the move back to Athens, college, and actually having a social life. Looking forward to all three of those. And not so much the same about leaving Birmingham.

... on second thought, I'll be posting something kinda a reminisce-y about the internship and Birmingham on the whole. Maybe not a whole heck of a lot, but just something pretentiously nostalgic and maudlin.

So, the story: there's a group that makes bikes for kids with disabilities. It's a cool idea, since what little kid doesn't love the idea of finally getting mobile? I think the excitement of a bike for a four-year-old is motivated by the same feelings a sixteen-year-old has for his first car. Anyway. It's a cool story, and the writer, Rakhia Nance, found a pretty cool angle to suit it.

This little guy has an unidentified mitochondrial disease that affects all the muscles in his body. He has practically no muscle control, none at all. He can't hold himself up, he can't lift his arms and legs, he can't even swallow on his own volition. I'm in awe of his parents. And these guys decided to build him a bike. It turned out more like a tricycle, but it'll allow him to sit up in the bike and be helped along by someone behind him.

Biggest thing I remember about this assignment: the kid was unabashedly attracted to blondes. A couple of the girls helping out at the foundation where they presented him with the bike were young attractive blondes, and every time one would walk by, he'd loll his head to the side to watch them, then give them this little grin. Mitochondrial disease or not, guy knows what he likes.

With grandma.

Just hangin' out, waitin' for my bike ...

Blonde alert.

With his mom.

The trike needed some adjustment when they first got him into it, but it wasn't bad for a first time.

I hope things work out with the little guy.

Okay, more later.

Rain on mine -- it'll make it interesting

Parade, that is. Tis the season for town parades, obviously.

Bunch of photos here, so be wary of viewer fatigue. Make sure to rest often, stretch when necessary, and take a buddy.

Catholics confuse me.
There are no book depositories or true grassy knolls in Homewood -- had there been, I would not have wanted to be this guy.

Then, of course, there are night parades.

Fun fun.

When things that are supposed to happen don't.

Akin to "when pets attack," and along the same lines of panic. For example, the Friday after Thanksgiving is supposed to be a busy travel day, right? I mean, folks are coming back from Grandma's house with cheeks that ache from being pinched, or catching a plane to escape one's father-in-law repeatedly trying to get you to pull his finger, or something familially obnoxious like that, so everything should be comfortably packed.

But nooooo, the day that I need traffic jams and jam-packed airport terminals is the day when people seem to cooperate and get along with one another. It'd be heartwarming any other day, but that Friday, it was just annoying.

So I hung around until I could get a good blur going on, sneaked onto the top of a parking garage on the north side of 20/59, and got some sunset photos. With blurry cars. 'Cause that way there's ... eh, never mind ...

I might kinda like the darker one a little better, but I couldn't completely decide, so I figured I'd post both.

More soon.

Trebuchets and nativity scenes

How, you might ask, would two such things go together?

Well, my sister made a ten-foot trebuchet for a physics class that never really worked right, and I always wanted to go back and fix the somewhat impressive device (that is now up on cinderblocks in my parents' front yard -- we are that kind of redneck, apparently) so I could hurl masses of water balloons at live nativity scenes come Christmas time.

I am so going to Hell.

What brought up that memory was an assignment from a few weeks ago: one of the Mormon churches was putting up a display of more than 500 nativities from all around the world. "Hey, cool," I thought, even though I don't really understand the attraction of erecting small barns that in reality might or might not have been carpeted with afterbirth and hay; "I'll get to meet some Mormons." Because, truth be told, I've run into a couple before, but they were brief encounters of the "here's your frapuccino" variety, and I felt like I've never met a Mormon being, well, Mormon-ly.

To sum up, I'll say this: they were some of the most absurdly nice and polite folks I've met, second only to the Sikh couple I met a month ago.

And they had nativities! Lots of 'em ...

Until someone makes some kind of Harley Davidson-themed nativity scene, the above, a cast-iron piece from one of the local furnaces, Sloss, is perhaps the most badass nativity out there. Even if baby Jesus in his cradle sorta resembles a mortar and pestle.

Anyway, more later.

Bum-de-bum-bum-Buuuum

... which is what I've been about posting in the past week or so. Posting is, as always, backlogged, but here's something from the UAB commencement this afternoon.And I know this is fuzzy, but isn't this just the most badass symbol of knowledge a school could have? I mean, it's a mace, for crying out loud!Okay, off to Tuscaloosa for a basketball game this evening.

Ciao, y'all.