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Elijah wrote this. And recorded every instrument on it except for the drums, which he programmed into his computer.

Proud Mama here.

What are your seven favorite words?

Mine:
- enthusiasm
- ektachrome
- converge
- indubitably
- blue
- dude
- seven

Reasons:

Enthusiasm: Because just say it!

Ektachrome: Not sure why I love it. It’s a type of slide film that I love, but I also just love the word. The way it’s spelled, the way it looks, the way it sounds.

Converge: Because of the way it sounds and what it means.

Indubitably: It makes me laugh. Just thinking it. Not sure I can pronounce it correctly.

Blue: What’s not to love?

Dude: Don’t like the way it sounds. The way it looks is funny. But dude, I use it all the time.

Seven: I love everything about it.

We went camping in Ocotillo Wells/Salton Sea this weekend. Daniel and I are so in love with the desert we decided to try braving the heat. It was crazy. The photo above was taken at Bombay Beach. Someone got stuck in the mud!

Daniel drove his truck and I drove with Nathaniel and Dillon in the nice air-conditioned car. I didn’t realize it, but Daniel’s truck was overheating the whole way out there. And I guess one thing you can do to keep an engine from overheating is turn on the heater. So he had the heater going full-blast in a truck with no air conditioning in 90+ degree heat.

It took us about 3 hours longer than it normally should to get out there because of traffic. Which means we got there at 9pm. We set up camp and played with my digital camera and Dillon’s tripod to get some long exposure shots. These are really fun to do on a summer night. If you use something like an iPod or a cellphone you can do light-painting in a really long exposure.

Here’s one Dillon drew a stick figure in (with Nathaniel’s iPod Touch):

In this one, Nathaniel pointed the iPod at the ground and walked around with it about a foot away from the dirt:

Then we spent an agonizing, sleepless night in the trailer. None of us could sleep. It was too hot—and any little shift any of us made was so loud it woke everyone else up. So we all laid there trying to be completely still in case anyone else was actually asleep. I did hear the boys snoring at some point, and they claim they heard me. I think we all got about 3 hours sleep—except maybe for Daniel, he probably got more than the rest of us.

It started getting light out about 5:30 am, and we all got up then. I went into town and took some pictures in Salton City while Daniel and the boys did some dirtbike riding.

There are lots of dead fish along the shore of the Salton Sea. It’s hard to tell in this pic, but there’s tons of them:

Most if not all of the things you see in that picture that look like lumps are dead fish. The Salton Sea is a big environmental disaster. You can read about it here.

There were also a lot of dead palm trees along the shore. But here’s a live one:

By the time I got back to camp, about an hour later, Daniel was drenched in sweat from dirtbiking in the heat and ready to go home. So we packed everything up and he drove the truck home, but Nathaniel, Dillon and I went out to Bombay Beach.

I’ve posted about it before. It’s a town on the lake that was flooded and all the trailers that were right near the lake were destroyed—buried in mud.

It’s like the apocalypse there.

I love it.

Then we headed further south to Niland, CA. Niland has a homeless community called Slab City. It attracts the hobo-hippy type of homeless people. There used to be a military base there, but it was closed down and all that remains now are a bunch of concrete slabs—ideal for parking your van or bus or RV on. It’s so far out in the middle of nowhere, nobody cares that there’s a group of squatters there. But Slab City isn’t what attracted us—we went to see Salvation Mountain.

I haven’t developed any pictures of Salvation Mountain yet. Here’s one digital I took of the welcome sign:

I’ll do a post later just about Salvation Mountain. We were able to meet the builder, Leonard Knight, the sweetest old guy you could ever talk to. He gave us a tour.

Oh, and on the way to Bombay and Niland we stopped at the North Shore Yacht Club. The swimming pool is still there, but since I was last there it’s been painted over and all new graffiti has sprung up.

I love the Salton Sea.

For some reason I think this is one of the greatest late night performances I’ve seen:

It’s the way they rock out the whole time.

It made me dig up some old photos from when I saw them live in Seattle, back in 2004.

It was near Halloween, and the singer wore this fake parrot on his shoulder all night.

I assume it was supposed to be some kind of Halloween costume. It’s nearly impossible to get a shot of his face that’s not covered in hair.

But I managed it.

Eye contact is always like a little added bonus.

Here’s some short clips from the show I saw.

“Golden”

Be right here forever,
Go through this thing together
And on heaven’s golden shore we’ll lay our heads

“Mahgeetah”

Does it shiver? always deliver?

Possibly one of my favorite lyrics ever.

Seven things you can do or have done that make you feel impressed with yourself?

1. Even though I’ve only heard this song a handful of times in the last 20 years, I can still sing along to every word.

The impression that you sell pulses in and out like a scent…

2. I jumped on stage and danced during a band’s show when I was a teenager. If you knew me as a teenager you’d know how out of character that was for me.

3. I killed a spider. Yes, you read that right. A tiny one, but still…

4. I once replaced a stickshift in my car, all on my own. WHILE home alone with three kids under the age of five. Sure, it was a VW bug stickshift, but still…

5. I gave birth to a baby with no painkillers at ALL.

6. I have survived multiple earthquakes.

7. I can read really fast.

Especially with a lensbaby. They’re rather cliche, but so fun to do.

These were all taken last evening in my apartment complex. I’d forgotten that a lot of flowers fold up in the evening, when the sun is going away. So cool.

I’m trying to blog about So You Think You Can Dance over at Kulturblog. I wasn’t sure I’d have time to do it in a timely manner, but I’m going to try. First post is up now.

Losing the stars without a sky
Losing the reasons why
You’re losing the calling that you’ve been faking
And I’m not kidding

It’s damned if you don’t, it’s damned if you do
Be true, ’cause they’ll lock you up in a sad sad zoo
Oh hidy hidy hidy what cha tryin’ to prove
By hidy hidy hiding, you’re not worth a thing

Sew your fortunes on a string
Blue smoke will take
A very violent flight
And you will be changed
And everything
And you will be in a very sad, sad zoo

I once was lost but now I’m found
I was blind but now I see you
How selfish of you
To believe in all the meaning of all the bad dreaming

Metal heart, you’re not hiding
Metal heart, you know you’re not worth a thing

Metal heart, you’re not hiding
Metal heart, you’re not worth a thing

I got some Amazon gift cards for my birthday and I used them to help pay for a lensbaby. It’s a lens for a DSLR camera that allows you to tilt it at different angles. What it does is creates a small area of the image that is in focus, the rest is distorted/blurred. You can move the area that is in focus around. It’s called “selective focus.”

I’ve been wanting one for years.

There’s a bit of a learning curve with this lens so I’m still experimenting to see what’s possible. Here are some cool shots I’ve taken so far. I also got a Macro attachment but I can’t remember exactly which pics were taken with the macro–if I know for sure it was, I’ll mention it.

This is a clown figurine in a shop window:

This is a bunch of cherries at the swap meet:

This is a flower bud, taken with the macro filter:

This was a weird doll/mannequin at the swap meet:

And this is a statue of baby Jesus at the Crystal Cathedral:

This is a macro of a flower:

It’s tricky to do macros because the depth of field is so razor thin, just the movement of my breathing can throw it out of focus. Makes for a fun challenge. Flowers are especially hard because they blow around in the wind.

This is a little figurine at the swap meet:

And this is me in the reflection of a door at the Crystal Cathedral (the door is covered in shiny chrome, it’s not glass):

I need to do a whole post on just the Crystal Cathedral but I don’t have time right now. Still working this big deadline…Someday soon I hope to come up for air.

Still super busy around here…big website project I’m trying to get wrapped up and more importantly, Cat graduated last night. Daniel’s parents came down for it and just left this morning. I’ll post pictures of her graduation when I get the film back. Gotta finish off the roll this weekend hopefully.

Super busy, yet I’ve still managed to somehow continue my documentation of the Liquor Stores of Orange County. Took the above polaroid today at lunch. I drive by this place all the time and realized last night that it’s screaming for a Polaroid shot. Polaroid film is expensive and hard to come by so I try to use it sparingly—it’s so fun, though, it’s hard not to use up an entire pack at a time.

This film isn’t the kind that the camera spits out and you watch the image appear—they stopped making that film. Instead, this film is an older type. You manually pull it out of the camera and then let the picture sit for a couple minutes, and then peel it apart. It’s called peel-apart film. It is really fun to use. You can get it for about $10 a pack, and there’s 10 pictures to a pack. So a dollar each. I took these on a drive up in the Santa Ana Mountains Daniel, Cat and I took last weekend:

(Sometimes the film gets spots like that last one.) I need to do a post about that drive and post more pictures from it—we were up inside the clouds for a bit. Super high up on top of the mountains on a narrow dirt fire road. It was fun, if scary!

Still super busy here with work…putting in 9 hours a day starting at 5:30 or 6:00 am so I can be done by 4. Although last night I worked until 8pm. But here’s a couple things I’ve been meaning to post about.

I’ve been asked by Suz to participate in a group photo blog of Orange County photographers. How cool is that? There’s 7 of us total, so everyone posts one picture a week. I’m assigned to post mine on Sunday.

Here’s the blog:

http://ocdailyphoto.typepad.com/

Also, Daniel has started a work-related youtube channel. He plans on filming things around the factory and posting them, I think. He’s got one video up so far about one of the boards he’s designed. It’s called the Signal Park Rocker.

Bet you didn’t know snowboards were so complicated.