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I’ve been meaning to revamp the photography section of this site for a while now; this weekend, I finally found the time to do it. I registered a new domain, straylightphotography.com, and put together a portfolio consisting of my 20 favorite shots (<shamelessPlug>many of which are currently on display at Interzone through February 28th!</shamelessPlug>). I’m hoping to quickly expand the site with themed portfolios (portraits, urban decay, etc.), but… first things first.

Also, the new portfolio has been an excuse to play with CSS3 and jQuery 1.4.  Visitors using Firefox, Safari, Chrome, or Opera should see a site that behaves like it was created with Adobe Flash, but is fully accessible and doesn’t require the proprietary Flash plug-in.  Visitors using Internet Explorer… well… it at least degrades cleanly.  Mostly.

As discussed elsewhere, today Congress officially tallied the electoral votes from the 2008 presidential election and declared Barack Obama the victor with 365 out of 538.  It may just be a formality at this point, but still: as of today, Obama is officially the next President of the United States.  After the trio of presidential heartbreaks (Gore in 2000, Dean in the 2004 primaries, and Kerry is the 2004 general), I’m still having a little trouble believing this actually happened.

Barack Obama outside American Dream Pizza, in Corvallis, Oregon.

Related, it’s also awesome to see that Howard Dean is finally getting credit for designing and implementing his successful 50-state campaign strategy.  While mocked by traditional politicos, it resulted in Democrats realistically competing in races all across the country, rather than being confined to blue states and urban centers.  Not a bad way to vindicate yourself after what turned into a disastrous 2004 primary campaign.

A few days ago I was snowed in; now I’m fogged in.  Midwest weather is bizarre.  I don’t think I ever saw this much snow in December during the 25 years I lived in Michigan, and now it’s all about to melt because the temperature has spiked to 60 degrees.  Flooding in December?  What a strange year.

This past week has completely flown by.  I put together a draft of our next research experiment, finished off my holiday shopping, and spent an evening building a collection of family photos to fill a cute little frame my sister found for my grandma.  I’ve met up with Leslie and her sisters and gone out with Colleen and Jon a couple of times, but mostly I’ve stayed home and visited with family.  Christmas was a day-long extravaganza that started with just the immediate family, then migrated to my Aunt’s house to see my dad’s side of the family, and ended with 30+ of my mom’s relatives coming over for dessert and drinks.  I think the photos speak for themselves:

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Huge

I can’t remember the last time we had the whole family together like that… with so many cousins, it seems there’s always at least someone missing (and aside from being home for a couple of weeks each December, for the last couple of years that person has been me).

So now I’m realizing that I leave in less than 48 hours, and sort of wishing that I was staying longer.  There’s no special someone I want to rush back for this year, and visiting with family has been pretty relaxing.  I’m still having plenty of teary moments when something around here reminds of when Twinkle was staying with us, but they’re finally starting to ebb.  Thankfully I didn’t take her to the nearest coffee shop, so I’ve had the ability to retreat there when being around the house has me a little too depressingly nostalgic.  Yesterday I hid out there for a few hours and tore through a book on audio engineering–at least when I get back, I’ll have some fun new recording projects to try in my home studio.

I was kind of hoping to have a chance to try snowboarding with my little brother Kyle while I was home, but I had research to work on when I first got back, and now the weather has turned all warm.  At the very least, I got to take some cool photos of him on a couple of homemade jumps in our backyard.

Kyle pulling a 180

I wasn’t expecting to see snow for a few more days, but tonight Corvallis is being gently blanketed by soft, picturesque flakes.  I ran out to the store as soon as I realized yes, we really were going to get snow tonight, and stocked up on firewood and spiced apple cider.  I should be all set for the next few nights, and then it’s back to Michigan, where I’ll get snow plus blustery winds… while colder than normal here, it still feels pretty calm outside.  I even went out for a bit with my camera and tripod to snap a couple of photos.  Tragically, I discovered that long exposure times don’t lend themselves to rendering the snowflakes softly drifting down from the sky.

The view from my porch

Looking back at my apartment

Yesterday Randy invited me over to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with Twinkle’s family. I showed up early, expecting a chance to play some guitar with Randy before the cooking really began, but Ted and Judy had just arrived, so kitchen preparations were already in full swing. Judy showed me how to make a pie crust and mix up a pumpkin pie filling; while I’ve been cooking a lot lately, baking is still all new to me.  I pitched in where I could, then had a chance to chat with Ted a bit a watch the old animated version of The Lord of the Rings (which he’d seen when it was first introduced in theaters).

Dinner itself turned out wonderfully, with Okie pie (sp?), salad, mashed potatoes, stuffing, veggie gravy, and of course (for everyone else) ham and turkey.  That morning I’d cooked up a cauliflower and coconut milk stew as my own main dish, and a side dish for everyone else.  It seemed to go over pretty well, just spicy enough to have some flavor but not really overpowering.

After dinner we had apple and pumpkin pie while watching Kung Foo Panda (which I’d never seen, and was surprisingly good).  Before leaving, we took a couple of group photos that came out beautifully:

Twinkle's Family

Twinkle's Family Plus One

More photos from the day can be found in my photo gallery.

Today I finally screwed up the courage to go get my ears pierced.  I’ve had a terrifying fear of needles since 2nd grade, when I spent a day in a hospital having blood-work done to determine whether my short stature was the result of some medial problem, or just genetic.  I swear they took more blood out of me than I thought was inside of me to begin with, and ever since I’ve had a tendency to faint at sight of needles heading toward my flesh.  Not today, though!  The people at High Priestess were awesome and professional, and I hardly felt a thing.  Now I’m feeling like a bit of a tool for putting it off so long.  I went with simple little barbell jewelry with black stones for now; after they heal, we’ll see if I feel like something more adventurous.

Anyway, in the last month I’ve grown a scruffy beard, gotten a hair cut, gained glasses, and had barbells pushed through my ear lobes.  I think that deserves a photo.

New face!