Wedding Album - San Francisco 2004

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj0aL1WBGGk

My friend Andy wanted to share this with as many people as possible, so I hope this helps. People in love should be able to get married if they want to. I love the music.

Gary Todd: "Work Redefined" - check it out

My little brother just made his first blog post. It's about his new CafePress shop. He's got some cool (read: snarky) ideas for t-shirts, etc. Check out Work Redefined (CafePress) and his blog by the same name (I sense a theme here). You can see who is the smartass in the family. He's actually a very nice guy, but I'm sure he wouldn't want you to know that. ALSO, I hope he gets rich because if he does, he owes me bigtime for the ideas to build a CafePress shop and start blogging about it. But the ideas for the products were all his. I'm not taking any of the credit (or blame) for those. If you've ever been ANYWHERE on the corporate ladder, you can relate to the products. (And no, he did NOT do this on company time.)

I'm also impressed by how fast he learned graphics. My brother is a very talented musician (I'm not kidding; there are three of us and you wouldn't want to hear the other two sing), and as such he could probably tell you how much money he's lost in that field of endeavor. As for the t-shirts and other products, even he probably didn't know he was a graphic artist, and I'm actually quite thrilled to see his store develop. At least now he has something useful to do with his twisted views on life :-p Hey, Gar, I love you! I'm proud of how you've navigated the learning curve. Next you can show me how to build a CP store. My ideas will be really different, though. Can we say, "probably animal-related"? Artistic, not so humorous? Maybe some neat travel pictures. Anyhoo . . . way to go!

Another log in the pilings

I should have gotten my camera out earlier. Here James has already sawed the log in two and it's fallen off its perch - the undercarriage of the building. At about half tide, it had come to rest completely off the ground somewhere between high and low water mark. This was certainly not the monster log of early January, but it did stretch nearly the width of the building. Earlier in the day, Lee tried to push it back into the river with the pike pole, but the log would have none of that.

Here you can see the log after the first cut.

. . . and James finishing it up as the tide started rising again. Note all the mossy green. Yeah, the water covers all that two times a day.

A crab's-eye-view of 1490 Marine Drive

The tide was especially low today. Laurel and I had clambered down the green rocks to watch James take out another log that had lodged under the building (see the post above this one). What's cool here, I think, is the patterns and light, and the fact that you can see how low and how high the water gets in the river. At high tide all of the broken and cut-off pilings are covered, including the sharp one in the center. On the day I moved in, nearly a year ago, I looked down to discover a raccoon scampering across the mass of ropes. They obviously find something they like to eat down here. I loved seeing it, especially because I'd been welcomed the same way to my first Astoria apartment on Bond Street, the one I was leaving when TPF and I moved across town to the river's edge.

Another view. The Bar Pilots' building is on the left. You can see their balcony. That building has screens to keep the floating logs out. Ours will also have a screen after this summer's renovations.

An unusual view of the radio tower and the back of 1490 Marine Drive.

Stunning photos by Denis Alexander Torres

If you want to see some truly beautiful photos, take a look at this collection by my friend and tapir colleague, Denis, from Venezuela. Here are Denis's photos on flickr. Many of the pictures are of wildlife, nature and amazing architecture in Venezuela. You'll be glad you followed this link!