This morning I woke up at 7:00 AM and only allowed myself the absolutely necessary time to take a shower and get dressed, then I was out the door by 7:30 on my way to the Bottoms. I had to shoot a couple rolls of film for a very open-ended landscape assignment and I think (hope!) it went really well.

I didn’t shoot with my digital much ’cause it was a lot colder than I anticipated, so I tried to spend as little time fumbling around with different cameras and lenses as possible. But the few shots I did get I really like!

All of the negatives should be ready for pick-up by now, but I was so cold and worn out from the bike ride that I took a monster nap with Felix when I got home and totally lost track of time! Considering I worked almost 8:30 to 5 both Saturday and Sunday at the sandwich shop, Lord knows I needed that nap! The assignment is due next Tuesday, so I’ll definitely have them blogged by this weekend.

When I got home from work tonight, Chris told me someone famous died today– but it was someone that actually made him feel sad when he heard the news, and he knew I would, too. I rattled my brain, mostly not wanting to know whom it was, until he finally told me: Paul Newman. I nearly cried! He died at home with his family from lung cancer.

We sat in the living room with Chris’s guitar and Katie’s drum kit, singing an improv song about Cool Hand Luke for a few minutes. Then we drove to the market and stocked up on some Newman’s Own items (Newman-O’s, salad dressing and pasta sauce). If I didn’t work tomorrow at 8:30 AM, a trip to the video store would’ve definitely followed.

Here are some of my favorite photographs of Mr. Newman, who will be greatly missed!

Thanks to imdb and hekirobu for the photos.

Behold! The ASUS Eee PC, in all its teeny tiny glory! This thing is so stinkin’ cute. Chris first read about these bite-sized laptops over the summer, and we slowly started coming up with more reasons to buy one until it became ridiculous not to. It mostly amounted to my desire to shoot a ludicrous amount of photos during our up-and-coming two month long trip to Thailand.

That’s Chris’s hand in the photo, which shows you just how small and perfect for traveling this thing is. With a 7″ screen and 4 gig flash drive, it weighs just about 2 lbs. It also has built-in WiFi and comes preloaded with Linux (though you can get them with Windows, too) as well as Skype (perfect for video-chatting with the fam back home!).

Best part of all is that it has a memory card reader, too! So I can just stick my card in and move the files over to my EHD, no-prob-Bob style. I doubt I will be doing any serious photo editing while on the trip, but it also has built-in microphone and camera, so you can definitely expect some video posts while I’m away!

Getting this in the mail has only heightened my excitement about the trip, not to mention my awareness of just how soon everything is creeping up on me. In 3 months I will be a college graduate, boarding a plane to fly across the world… I am definitely grateful we pulled out the checkbooks for this little guy.

Oh yeah, did I mention it was only $280? Pretty small price to pay for solving all of our travel problems!

As I’ve mentioned before, I love games of all sorts. Video games, card games, board games– I even like games that involve physical exertion (though to a much smaller degree, natch). When I think of settling down in the future, it’s my ultimate dream to have an enormous game closet. The last month I’ve been exposed to two incredibly fun– and incredibly nerdy– games that will someday be in that imaginary closet (it looks more like a cramped corner on my bookshelf, at the moment).

First, there’s Munchkin! A wonderful, cutesy and cleverly written card game that reminds me of a simplified cross between Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. There are all sorts of theme-based expansion packs you can get; I especially want the Wild West version, “The Good, The Bad and the Munchkin!”

You can learn all about Munchkin and purchase a deck ($24.95) of my favorite version, Star Munchkin, at the official website.

Second is Zombies!!!, which my brother brought with him while visiting us this week. This game is not unlike Munchkin in that the secondary goal of the game is to utterly sabotage all the other players without apology or shame. Alan and I grew up watching horror movies, and, shoot– we just plain grew up together– so this game is right up our geeky and vengeful alley!

You can learn all about Zombies!!! and purchase a board ($24.99) at the official website.

Since I had consistently missed out on participating in the Flickr group DILO, I made sure to mark every calendar I have noting when the next one was coming up. This Monday, September 22nd, I finally got to participate! Though, to be honest, it wasn’t much different than any other day where I never let my camera leave my side, heh :)

Like most days, Monday started off at my computer. It’s a filthy mess, I know it.

Later, I went outside to take my 365 and Felix had emerged from the shadows with a small bird in his mouth (this time it was dead! Phew!). He had no qualms with maniacally tossing the poor thing into the air, and a couple times it ended up in the garden– which meant I had to fetch it since the garden is obviously nothing more to him but a place to play with dead things and roll around in catnip.

Some of Felix’s insanity was caught on camera while I took my 365. The shoes I’m wearing were just delivered that morning from Dandelion Vintage. They are stiff as a board and murder my feet, but they’re well worth the trouble!

Chowed on my favorite junk food items: grapefruit soda and Doritos. I like to put them in fancy dishes so I can feel like 1% less of a huge pig while eating them. I realized moments after finishing the last gulp of soda that I was feeling the onslaught of Humboldt Crud, and made a swift trip to the market for some emergency health food! Kale, lemon cucumber, tofu, sweet potatoes and lots of other goodies were bought and promptly devoured.

I haven’t been riding my bike lately, so when I went to the market I couldn’t just whiz past the old hospital in the blink of an eye like usual. I always have to remind myself to never put off going to the store for too long because this place seriously freaks me out in lowlight!

Having 2 cats and 2 kittens in the house, it’s not a day in my life without some sort of crazy rambunction*! I still don’t know exactly what kind of hijinx Sammy and Francis were getting into; I only managed to capture the guilty looks on their faces.

* I made that word up when I realized there isn’t a noun form for “rambunctious.” I like to think it makes perfect sense.

And that pretty much sums up my day! In the evening my brother and his girlfriend came to town and I cooked dinner for everyone. We chatted on the back porch until it got too cold, then came into the living room for a bit and played some Mario Kart on the Wii. That’s about it!