This is the scene of my first crime of the year - illegal dumping of some branches that fell off our front maple tree which i dumped over the stone wall of the cemetary next to our house. My heart was beating fast (;-).

Leslie and i swung by some neighbors by the beach cottage to check out some puppy border collies.

This is the view to the left down the beach from the beach cottage. You know, I sort of take this for granted a bit too much...have to keep trying to always appreciate how nice this is, and not worry about work, the future etc.

This is part of the view from the beach cottage...it was a really hot day, and you can sort of tell by the blue haze starting to form...but it was getting blown away by the wind, so still crisp. A nice kick off to summer.

While walking with Elton along the water, the sun began to set, and over at the marsh pond/estuary I spotted this quaint little schene and decided to pop a shot with the little old digital cam on digital zoom...gotta love that...a pack of cigarette size device doing serious zoom (it is a Canon PowerShot SD300 which i very highly recommend).

This weekend was half spent down at the beach cottage. As usual, here is a dog photo, of Elton, at a nice moment where the sun was setting on the Stokes' estate next to the cottage...we went wandering barefoot through the marsh, which was very warm. a nice experience.

This is Greg...on Winddancer, which we call WindPRANCER in homage to San Francisco, where we both lived for quite a while. Greg is one of the key great friends from Providence. This is the day of the inaugural sail - first of the season. We had a great time...lots of tacking on the way out, lots of rum and coke on the way back in. a nice time, for sure.

This is Jim. He is a pretty out there guy who used to work with Tom Foley and is sort of my main man when it comes to politics, as he has a lot of experience in it. We drank several Pabst Blue Ribbons and talked about RI politics at the lake house he has rented for the summer. Jim has become tapped in quite quickly to RI, but has to figure out just where he is going with it all..as the state is a rather complicated mess when it comes to politics, as we all know. but most importantly...jim is a hoot, and i enjoy hearing his out there stories from the road of power brokering.

OK. more ridiculous blogging stuff. here is a picture of the Pabst we were drinking by the side of the lake where everyone was cruising around too fast in powerful motoboats and abnoxious jet skis.

Wister, the cat we found in an abandoned lot a few years ago, thinks he is a god and comes walking with the dogs in the morning out in the woods. Wister is insane.

Wister (the cat) likes to come along with us when we walk the dogs in the woods. Here he is being 'one of the dogs' after a successful jaunt.

I am pretty glad that I finally got a full yard of grass going on out back...Elton is taking it all in over Memorial Day.

Elton after eating a bunch of buttercups

Walking back to the cottage after some quality running on the beach.

Elton and Jeeves, running along the beach by the fields that are by the woods...their favorite thing.

This weekend we went down to the beach house to do a little work...Elton as always struck a nice pose for the camera.

This is the guy giving the History Dept graduates their graduating honors...I felt just like this photo after all the hours of the Brown graduation ceremony

Oddly, the thing that fascinated me most about the graduation was how so many people now wear flip flops - I mean, it is like fashion now, and even graduatating people were wearing them during the ceremony. I honestly don't like this with the grads, though I did tell Leslie I thought it was fine that she wore flip flops herself to the ceremony.

This weekend I went to the Brown University Graduation. It was pretty damned disorganized, I must say...hours upon hours of peopel wandering around the campus...three different ceremonies for each grad. Ugh.

This is the Crue in Tuscany in 2004.

This is a section of Providence that is pretty cool...all sorts of old warehouses, many of which house artists, in what i gather are non-legal conditions, which makes it all the cooler.

This is the symbol for the Bach family...as in Johann Sebastian Bach, who I have become a rather crazed fan of over the past few years...it is one element of my antidote for having to commute - I imagine the time as quasi-enlightened and of value if I am listening to something so perfect as Bach.

This is where the woods turned into fields, and the beach is in the background. We got leslie's mom a little beach cottage right next to all this, which is great for the summer.

This was the walk down to the beach from the cottage...did this every day. Paradise, really.

This is the cottage leslie and I first lived at after coming back to the East Coast...it is called Wister Cottage, which is on the Wister estate which is on 'Crowfield' and Johnny Stokes is the current lord (and a very nice guy, as are his kids, who we got to know a bit...Walter and Kemble in particular).

and this is the picture/autograph that Bono did for me.

I just have to put this photo in this thing as it was for sure the best moment I had the year I moved from San Francisco to Rhode Island. Bono is definitely a super cool and nice guy...spent a good 5 minutes chatting with me outside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Insane mirror in the cariar bar that Nick dragged me to in NYC...we ate hundreds of dollars of cariar and got wasted on vodka (what else). The bathroom had black lacquer toilets and sinks with gold fittings...seemed like a ride back to the heyday of the late 70's or early 80's.

Nick, party time in NYC.

Cool shot of Leslie on my first real adventure with new digital camera in January. We were down at our friend Adam Schwartz's beach place in CT for a get together...they just had another kid.

Here is the speaker of the house...nice grainy effect, eh? Used that digital zoom and at least some photo emerged indoors. Anyhow, he appears to be above board, though rather hard to access as he has a legitimate thriving legal practice (all the RI legislators are part time and make like $12k for their services, which i think breeds the potential for corruption in and of itself...unless you are already wealthy).

These guys were the most normal set of individuals on the floor...except for that guy down in the lower right...classic RI, there. I think I actually know him...has a radio show and his wife went to Wheaton, if he is who I think he is. But anyhow, I stopped taking photos of the really suspect looking dudes for I think I was raising a lot of attention and looking rather like an FBI agent or something. I was just amazed by the cast of characters...and amazed they could so dominate a governmental body. Rhode Island...you gotta learn to love it in all its wackiness.

I went to the State House for the swearing in of the new congressmen...good reason to play hookie from work, as Rhode Island has a notoriously corrupt and cheesily colorful House of Representatives (known here as the Assembly). I couldn't believe the cast of characters...lots of pinky rings, ties with inappropriate colors for legilstators like purple and brown, and some dudes that look like something right out of casting for middle-level insurance managers.

Here is a shot of swearing in day for the infamously corrupt RI House of Representatives. I as here because a guy from my neighborhood (Patrick O'Neill) knocked out the notoriously questionable old speaker of the house, Dick Harwood. Patrick is now a freshman congressman and learning the ropes.

Wister (the devil!) soaking in some winter rays on the wood pile.

Spooky Cristo, New York.

Cristo display in NYC. A good time.

Leslie, New York, hanging in 'Alphabet City' in front of Vince's place, wearing a mink coat. We got inside very quickly after this shot.

Our bungalo in the fall.

Hawkins hanging on the Woodpile, 'striking a pose.'

Our bungalo in teh fall

Elton during the big storm this winter on our street

Walk in Winter

Atlanta - Fashion Show

Just FYI...a lot of this blog stuff is going to end up jumping around in time, due to my inability to post everything (like photos) at one time, and the editing being rather kludgy. So whatever...I am getting used to the fact that I have to almost be writing backwards due to how things are posted, and it messes up all sense of narrative, anyhow. Little tiny bites of text and visuals that maybe have to somehow stand on their own. Seems like MTV journaling, or even 'worse', Entertainment Tonight. Well...So it goes, and I suppose it is the zeitgeist and I have to just jump in and not swim against the tide.

from last week...

Yeah,

I am getting the swing of things...I decided to go out with camera in hand, and had a basically dull time taking pictures of my Mojito and reading the local subculture rag. But as luck would have it...or serendipity...on my way home while taking photos of boring buildings to show the dullness of Atlanta this guy named Dennis Lopez, who is a fashion show coordinator, asked my where the Doubletree hotel was. I said I would take him there, and what do you know but he gets me into this fundraiser fashion show and I took a ton of photos. Check it out!

I hung out at the Rock Bottom Brewery in the evenings (in Buckhead) and here I sipped on a Mojito and read about Trent Reznor's blog...which actually sort of inspired me because he is reticent to share his internal life then all of a sudden after years of secrecy burst forth and is spewing to the world all his thoughts on everything. figured i would give it a go, too, just a half hour before. Synchronicity..gotta love it.

Fashion Show

This, to me, is Atlanta...big buildings, new construction. In this stop there was a sign "these trees have been moved to XYZ park to make room for a new building"

Fear of White Hat! Kept messing up my photos it was so big! But very cool.

Strike that pose!

Atlanta - new buildings, fashion shows, malls!

wild dogs...for real