As I’ve always said, if I’m not participating in online blogs, Facebook, emails, and anything else yet invented or yet to be, it generally means I’ve been busy with other things. A summer full of travel, a novel completed (a rough first draft, that is) and a lot of consulting work have kept me away from posting here. To get the ball rolling again, a photo of the loading *cranes in Alameda at sunset, looking north west towards the hills of San Francisco.

*the rumor is that cranes such as this in Alameda and Oakland are what inspired George Lucas to create the AT-AT snow walkers in the movie “The Empire Strikes Back”.

After setting up the cool new WordPress 2.7 for a friend, I decided to upgrade my old version as well. This is just a test so I can assure myself I didn’t make the whole thing go BOOM.

Happy New Year to everyone!

I have been working at the Chanel Mobile Art project in Central Park.  The event has opened to the public and runs through November 9th.  The exhibit houses approximately 10 art installations, including painting, photography, film, and sculpture.  Each visitor gets a personal tour,  guided by an MP3 player (which thankfully is NOT an iPod!) and makes for a unique experience.  As I heard a visitor remark yesterday, “Say what you will about liking the art or not, but you’ll never experience anything like that again!”

After returning from the Nationals, Kristen and I went up into the Catskills of New York to spend a few days at the Dai Bosatsu Zendo. If you want seclusion you can’t do much better than this place unless you know of somewhere that has no electricity. We spent several days in what they call Beecher House; it has some connection to Harriet Beecher Stowe, but I am not sure exactly what that connection is as of yet (I haven’t researched that hard, though). Regardless of the connection, it is a great place to write. I took a few photos of the lake, from the lake, and of the family of 7 snakes that lived under the patio, who would come out every morning and sun themselves on the grass.