taken from my window tonight: (this was no accident)

Ok, so first off, I want to thank everybody for the birthday wishes. I'm one of those strange people who like to try to hide my birthdate, but some of you still manage to wish me happy birthday. I actually think I got the most wishes this year (thanks in part to my workplace - I tried once to remove my birthdate from the company calendar, but failed). Thank you much!

I can now rent a car without paying jacked up prices! Yay! The next age milestone I have to look forward to is 59 1/2, when I can start putting pulling (what an embarassing typo) out what remains of my Roth IRA without paying taxes (ooooh). Yay, life.

Now, onto a more serious topic. One of my friends (*COUGH JENNIFER COUGH*) recently went to England for Thanksgiving break. While at Stonehenge, guess who she ran into?

RACHEL MCADAMS. RACHEL. FRIGGIN. MCADAMS.

And you know what infuriates me?! She didn't even TRY to hook me up with her!

How hard would it have been to be like, "Oh, Rachel, I love your work! Can I get a picture with you? Great, thanks! By the way, I know this AWESOME guy - you'd make the cutest couple! Can I pass him your contact information? You should totally marry him."

HOW HARD?! HOW HARD, DO I ASK?????

P.S. I thought Jennifer was pulling my leg until she provided picture proof - dag it!

Just got back from Big Sur - the final drive down was a whopping 12 hours (forgot everybody was driving back this weekend) - I hit traffic in every conceivable place... trying to leave Big Sur, all alone the 101, then all around LA, then around SD as well.

Anyways, I think I'll be largely disappointed with the photos I took once I load them all on my computer - I was mostly active midday (which means the sun was way too bright and washed out any good photos). (I may also break my own rule of doing some post-production work in Photoshop with these photos)

Anyways, this one is from the drive up Friday night:

More to come as I get a chance to sift through them.

Update: I ended up pruning the whole collection down to 24 tonight and I've posted them up at http://roykim.net/photos/big-sur/

They turned out pretty decent, actually!

I succeeded in helping to cook a Thanksgiving dinner! It wasn't as hard as I imagined - just really time consuming. I now feel confident I can fly solo next year and do the whole meal myself ;)

Some pictures from tonight: (full album)

The turkey came out really well - was not overcooked, and had great flavor!

I helped make this cheesecake last night - which turned out really great. I'm gonna get a copy of that recipe for myself!

Enjoying the company in the kitchen while cooking

Coworker Guerric (on left), who owns the awesome cheesecake recipe, and did a ton of cooking (I just helped out)

Dinner is served!

Mmm, deserts.

Chairs were in great demand; we ended up with quite an assortment.

This is the solution we came up with when trying to make more space.

Post-meal happiness

. . .

Now I'm getting ready for my 3-day road trip up to Carmel-By-The-Sea and Big Sur tomorrow. I've figured out the most important thing: the soundtrack. I'm leaning heavily towards Red Hot Chili Peppers (very chill, cruising music).

I'll see you guys on Sunday night, and I hope all of you had a fantastic Thanksgiving!

And on a more serious note, my heart goes out to the families of those affected by the Mumbai attacks ... such senseless violence...

One of the things I miss about North Carolina are the cool fall rains. There's nothing better to fall asleep to than the pitter patter of the rainfall.

It does not rain in San Diego. Ever. But, as luck would have it, it is raining very steadily tonight - it's just like the rainfalls at home!

To go to bed, hearing the melodic drumming of the raindrops on the streets below ... so awesome.

so here's a fun game to play at the beach. you take a group of your friends, and you line them up, with their backs towards you.

the game is, you throw the football at them, and they have to all jump and turn around and try to catch the football.

now, your goal is to aim for their nads - the moment they turn around, you want to nail them. their goal, much like those guys who defend against soccer free kicks, is to defend their crown jewels.

i had a lot of fun playing this game when i was back in nc - you can tell by how much i'm grinning:

by the way, doesn't that picture make me look somewhat athletic? like i know what i'm doing?? doesn't it??? this could be the most normal picture of me ever taken.

A few nights ago, I was getting really frustrated with my camera.

"Gosh, how the heck do I set a custom white balance?" (the language wasn't so PG-13)

While playing around with the AEB settings on the Rebel, I realized there *was* a custom white balance feature. D'oh.

For those of you who haven't yet figured this out yet, go to "Menu", and go to the Camera 2 options - select "Custom WB", and then select a picture to serve as a baseline. Done.

The difference?

Of course, I do like the orange effect in certain photos - it does seem more "natural" to night-time city photography (everything sure seems orange to me). But sometimes you want to rip the warmness out (as it was when I was photographing that abandoned building).

There you go, something useful.

So guess what new toy I got? Yes, kids ... a Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye lens! Since I lack a full-frame digital SLR (Canon 5D - hint hint), the fisheye effect on my Rebel XTI is less pronounced. But this gave me a reason to shoot off a roll of Tri-X on my Elan 7. Now to send in my first roll of film since the Vietnam/Korea trip ... :)

Anyways, I had a lot of fun just taking shots close to where I live with this - these pictures aren't meant to be good in any way - they're just fun pictures I took tonight (I did take a lot of effort in setting up those beach pictures - these are coming straight off the memory card!). Once I get the hang of this lens, I may try to take some better pictures, but for now, I'm having a lot of fun.

Yay for where I live!

Yay for the US Grant and distortion!

I'm really looking forward to getting the Tri-X back.

So my short lens review: this lens is pretty awesome. The f/2.8 and wide angle actually makes it perfect (in my opinion) for shooting cities at night. It's weird to hear the autofocus motor whir (too used to USM, I guess). But it's a really fun lens.

I have a pretty awesome roadtrip up to Big Sur/Carmel over Thanksgiving, so I'm pretty pumped to make use of this new lens - the limited sensor size on my Rebel may force me to start shooting film again (time to find me some Velvia 50...)

Edit: If the friggin economy hadn't crapped out, and I had some capital gains to show for this year, I'd totally get the Canon 5D. Dag it. Now I have to actually wait and save. Blah!