Tis the last snow of the season.

I woke up this afternoon to gigantic flakes of snow. It looked like three inches fell. I ate my breakfast and finished watching The Prestige. I glanced out the window and much to my dismay, the snowflakes had turned to rain drops. I grabbed my stuff and drove out west hoping to find snow flakes. Instead, just rain drops.
This is Middleburg, a favorite haunt of mine. These are picts I took from my car.










Once I got home and looked at the pictures on my computer I realized how dirty the sensor on my D200 is. I guess snow does have its uses. My rarely used D70 looks like it will be my workhorse soon. Time to drop off the D200 for a new battery door and some love. Oh well. C'est la vie.

eat your heart out pc!

i know i said i would post a new pict every day, but well, i am pretty bad about that. anyways, at least i am posting nearly every day.

for those of you who have macs here is a cool surprise.

1. go to sys prefs and turn off expose. meaning - should be selected for the keys. also, go to screensaver and choose something pretty like cosmos!



2. then open up terminal. applications>utilities>terminal.


3. then paste in this command and press return:
/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &

make sure there aren't any line breaks. now, minimize all your windows so you can see your desktop. pretty huh? when you want it to stop, just quit terminal or close that window with the command.

hopefully this makes up for a lack of pictures.
this is an old trick. make sure you turn off expose as shown. otherwise it messes it up. apparently, i have been told if you were to try to do this on a pc it would crash the system.

Me Habla Espanol Mui Shittito

So in a month I am going to El Salvador. Right now I am trying to learn Spanish via this book and these CDs I bought. Learning French was easier.
I took Latin (Lingua Latina vivit!) my entire highschool career and then a couple semesters at NOVA. My Latin teacher, Ms. Bartelmes always said the French were D+ Latin students. I beg to differ. I took French for a semester at NOVA and I had a much much easier time picking up French than I did Italiano or Espanol.
That being said, I have completely forgotten both my French and Latin because I never used them.

Eat your heart out Wegmans

So the other night Glen and I went to the new Whole Foods (aka yuppie heaven) in Fair Lakes. It is their biggest and boldest store ever - or so they say. Afterwards we hung out with Charles and tried to convince him of the superiority of the Fair Lakes Whole Foods to the Fairfax Wegmans. All I have to say is Wegmans doesn't have gelato.
The wine tasting room is insane at the Whole Foods. Basically they give you a debit card, which you load $$ onto. Then you go to these machines, put in your debit card, and out spews some wine.
Anyways, here are some scenes from wine tasting at the Whole Foods:





This is the view of a corner of the store from the wine tasting room.


This is Glen posing in the elevator.

Thank you all for coming.

So Thurs. we had the opening of our thesis show. All went well. My friend Glen was there to take pictures, as usual. I, being the brilliant photographer I am, didn't bring my camera. Click on the pict below to see more photographs he took of the opening.

This is me and my dear friend Gary:




This is my dad and I:


One of my friends, Vinh, couldn't make it. Being the honorable Frenchman he is (I say this because I doubt an American man would do this without prompting), he sent me flowers to my school. On the left are the yellow roses he sent me, and on the right is the orchid my dad brought me.







This Sunday at 5 we are taking the photographs down. I want to thank everyone for showing up. It meant a lot to me. I also want to thank both of my teachers too. As you have read in the previous post they are the picked up tab after a long night of drinking.

In other news I decided I am going to try to post one photo a day that I have taken. I really want to get in the habit of photographing on a daily basis. Taking pictures is a kinda zen thing for me, and it relaxes me. Especially when I am taking the pictures I want to take, and am not doing an assignment.

The End.

I never thought I would be upset that they closed school.

I am upset. Tonight was supposed to be our critique of our thesis. I was prepared to get creamed. I was prepared for Denny to get back at me and tell me that I suck, in front of everyone. My boss was even gonna come and crit. Alas, they closed school, so now crit is rescheduled for tomorrow morning. BOOOO! Who wants to be critiqued when you should be in bed sleeping.
They better not close tomorrow, or I will be pissed, as will the legions of people who have been promised free beer.

Don't forget, tomorrow 6pm, my opening reception, and your chance at FREE BEER! Use the NY ave entrance.

Btw, at work we listen to CNN or the other channel that is owned by some Aussie megalomanic who wants to own every piece of media out there. The only thing that those two channels are covering is Anna Nicole Smith, and what they are going to do with her body, who gets the kid, etc. I'm not sick of it yet, because the story gets crazier and funnier every day. In fact I love it. Its the tabloidization of our news! YAY! Somehow though, I am afraid this Anna Nicole stuff is warping my brain and I might wind up naming my first born Anna Nicole, even if its a boy.

Its hung.

Well we did it. Denny is the most hardcore creature I have come across. He threw up in the middle of us hanging our stuff, then goes back to hanging. When I told the Crow, he was amazed. Denny's pict is below. It pretty much sums up our experience hanging our stuff. Mine wasn't too bad though. The person who was supposed to be there to help us out didn't do too much helping us out. Though he did hang half of my stuff. His attitude wasn't the best I have seen. My favorite quote of his was, "Hopefully after four years of school we know what art is."
Colin got shafted. He got 12 feet of space for his thesis instead of 26. Cute huh?
Anyways, I'd like to thank Jared and the other Susan for their tremendous help. They are the harbor in the storm, the light at the end of the tunnel, the picked up tab after a long night of drinking.
Click on Denny to see more photos of our hanging experience.

An homage to Stanley Kubrick and Dan Flavin.

Stanley Kubrick was a babe when he was young. I have a crush on young Stanley Kubrick and I love his films. Did you know he started off as a photojournalist?
This is Angel's and my homage to him and Dan Flavin.

I have my doubts.

This is an interesting article in the Post about the Corcoran's upcoming modernism show. Right now the Corcoran is dark (except for our thesis show - go see it!) and preparing for this huge exhibit. I have my doubts. It isn't that I think that our new director has bitten off more than he can chew. It is that I think the Corcoran b.s. bureaucracy will in some way screw this up. I hope the show does well. I also hope that our new director can include a greater focus on the student's needs than has been done in the past (see Colin's post about this).
I could rant and rave about the lack of communication and concern from the Corcoran bureaucracy, but that would be a post that would take days to read. Besides, I think Colin's post sums it up.

Ahhhh.

Today was a good day. Lemme digress:

Upon driving to my web design class which I have already missed two of (see previous post ), I hear over the radio the very last verses "American Pie" by Don McLean. This happens to be one of my father's and my favorite songs. As I am doing this, I am on Rt 1 going through a stop light and I see a Toyota MR2. My father's MR2. Realizing if I honked he wouldn't notice me, so I settled for continuing on and calling him to leave a voice mail. Turns out later my father was in my neck of the woods to go to a meeting.
So then I arrive in class. A few minutes late, but that is ok. No disruption. I say hello to my teacher and introduce myself. He doesn't ask me where I have been or what my major malfunction is for missing the first two weeks of class. Instead he hands me some papers, asks me a question or two, and I set down for catching up with the rest of the class. By the end of class I was already ahead of some of my classmates. Phew. I like my teacher already. Plus, he might come to the opening. It is amazing what the temptation of free beer does to people.
Then I set out to pick up my pictures. Excellente. Mui Bueno. They are lovely.
Then I go to the Italian Store for some pizza. I thought I needed a # since the line was so long. I picked #26. They were calling #83. I waited. Patiently. Then I saw some people walk up to the side of the counter and just get a slice. Turns out you didn't need a #. WOOHOO. I ate my Sicilian pizza, some gelato thingy (which wasn't real gelato), washed down with Pineapple Orange Papaya juice. Yum.
Come home, post stuff on my blog, take a nap. Later I shall go to a friend's party opening thing (I don't think they are having free booze.).

Shervin's show

So last night I went to go see my friend Shervin's photographs at Asylum in Adam's Organ.

This is Shervin:


This is Shervin and his friend whose name I forget:


This is Brian. As in James-Brian (I can't read the handwriting of his last name). This is not Shervin shrunk down to size.
Behind him are Shervin's fotos, with some falling out of their mattes. His photos must have gotten drunk before the opening.
Back to Brian - he is studying photography at NOVA (a wise decision I must say - their alumni are quite brilliant). He is very likely coming to our opening this Thurs. He is debating whether or not to pursue a full degree/career in photography. He also likes lots of depth of field in his photos, and can't wait to use a large format camera.

It snowed!

At least it isn't that stupid wintry mix. This was yesterday when I woke up:

You can tell that I am in school

because my desk/work area looks like this:

sometimes i get a little stressed

things that happen when i get stressed are:

i forget everything. normally i can keep a running track of things in my head. unfortunately for me (but not for my boss) the only things i can keep track of right now are work related, and even that ability isn't where it normally is.
in school i have forgotten almost everything. i have been so focused on printing and wrapping up my thesis, nothing else matters. case in point: i missed my first two classes of web design. they are sat. mornings 9-2pm. i knew i forgot the first one an hour after class started. the second one, i forgot that i forgot until monday night. not good, i know. i know. so this saturday i am going to put on my prettiest smile and beg my prof to forgive me. if not, at least i still have two weeks to drop the class.
that is if i don't forget.

This is a test

of the emergency broadcast system. this is only a test