papayas

I just bought tickets to India! June 26 - August 10.

I'll be staying with Madhu, a friend I met years ago through flickr. She's from India, but lived in San Francisco for years. We met when she lived here, but she moved back to India a few years ago. I've been talking about visiting since she moved back, and I'm finally making it happen.

She lives in Hyderabad, so I'll be staying with her and then using that as my base for any travels I do. I will also be volunteering at a school for kids with autism. I need for my trip to have more of a purpose. I will make nice photographs and learn a little about how schools for kids with special needs are run in other countries. It will be a learning experience, and hopefully a stepping stone for things further down the road.

Anyway, more to come, or at least I'll try. :)

heehee - this is a cheat post - just being sent from flickr.

I bought a medium format camera! Shooting film - check it out. :)

Wow, I went all of 2010 without posting a single thing here.

Not sure how LJ came up on my radar again, but it has and I'm considering coming back to it, at least periodically.

2009: an overall fantastic year.
2010: many shitacular moments, but it ended pretty well.
2011: better be damn good.

Long time no see.

Growing up, my family always had plenty of pets. We always had dogs and sometimes we supplemented with other animals: cats, parakeets, ducks, chickens, fish, turtles, and mice. If I'm asked about a childhood pet of mine, however, I really only think of one.

When I was barely old enough to remember, we went into Flagstaff for the day as a family and returned home with a small black and white half-chihuahua, half-terrier mix that was being sold at a pet store for $19.99. We thought he was lucky to have found himself a home so quickly and we named him Lucky.

I loved him like I loved no other pet in my life. I have so many wonderful memories with him in them. He had 14 good long years in him and was with us until I was 18.

The one memory in particular that came back to me tonight after reading a friend's post on flickr was a time when I was in Jr. High, in 7th grade. School let out early one day, and instead of sticking around and waiting for our bus, a friend and I decided to walk over to the elementary school next door and catch the bus with the younger kids (it was a small town - things like this were okay because everyone knew everyone).

I arrived home, eager as always to have Lucky excitedly greet me at the door. Only that day he didn't. He wasn't anywhere in the house. He wasn't anywhere in the backyard. He wasn't anywhere around my house. I was home alone and completely freaked out.

I went to my friend's house and asked if she wanted to help me look for him and we commenced an exhaustive search of the neighborhood.

Sad and tired, we returned home to find my mom pulling into the driveway with Lucky in the passenger seat. My mom was unexpectedly off of work that afternoon and had taken Lucky to school to pick me up on my early release day as a surprise. She had waited by the Jr. High buses until all the kids were gone and then figured I must've gotten on a bus without her seeing, so she finally gave up.

My mom had never done anything like that before, and never did again. It would've been great, that moment of seeing them there at the school. I'm sad that it never happened.

Stumbled upon this quote online and want to remember it:

When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.

I had a tongue piercing for about a month when I was a sophomore in college. I suffered through the pain of the piercing and the swelling that ensued (made worse by my daily consumption of honeydew and cantaloupe in the dining halls - it took me a while to realize they are acidic and were aggravating the wound).

Finally, everything healed and I was having fun with the piercing, but the instant it interfered with my ability to eat chocolate, I took it out. Letting a piece of chocolate melt slowly on your tongue is one of the greatest pleasures in life. Once I realized I couldn't do that with a tongue piercing, out went the piercing. It's all about priorities.

Follow-up to yesterday's post.

The officer resigned today.

Meanwhile, protests on the streets of Oakland turn violent.

An unarmed man was shot and killed by a BART police officer as he laid face-down on the ground with his hands behind his back. Very disturbing. People are in an uproar. A friend of mine witnessed the shooting.

One article here