Can I call ya Eddie?

Meet Edmund, my new ride. I bought Edmund a little over a month ago. He's a BMW 328i coupe and I love him. My Jeep's transmission gave out a while back and I decided it was probably time to go shopping, as the old Jeep was about 8 years old. It was tough to trade in the Jeep, he'd been my car for so long. But, it didn't take long at all to move on. Eddie has a black leather interior with a poplar trim, it is quite beautiful inside. He's a 6-cylinder and has 230 horsepower, which is plenty as far as I'm concerned. And, he's pretty photogenic, if you ask me.

Once in a yellow light bulb

If light bulbs represent ideas, then do yellow light bulbs represent great ideas? Sounds good to me. I don't have much to say about this photo. Ironically, I have no idea what to say about it. But, I like it, so there you go.

Storm of stars

Last night we had an amazing storm. And when I say amazing I mean amazingly powerful. It was a line of red and purple on the radar that swept across the metroplex. Winds in some areas were 60 to 85 miles an hour. So of course, as I'm watching the news coverage, I decide to watch it roll in from my balcony. The clouds were beautiful as they slid across the sky. The wind started to pick up. I dont think our winds in uptown were over 40 miles an hour, but they were still strong enough to knock over road barriers and construction junk. I could smell the rain with the winds. Then in perfect sequence came the rain. Just pouring down from the sky. Watching it reminded me of this photo. Then it got a bit heavy and I had to call it quits.

This is a different star trails photo than my others. It doesn't have as much curvature to it because I didn't point the lens towards the north star. So this one reminds me of rain since its trails are a bit straighter. Last night's rain wasn't quite as peaceful as this, but some days when it rains, it rains like this. One of those rains where you want to be on your porch with a glass of wine or coffee, hearing it thump the ground.

MP3s just don't have the crackle

I've decided it might be time to go retro. I need, yes need, a record player. We listened to records all weekend, including this one (which is Paul Simon by the way.) I love playing records. And no, I'm not too young to know what a record sounds like. I'll admit it, my first (and last) record was Michael Jackson's album "Bad." Bad, I know. I remember recieving it one Christmas when I was about four. If my memory serves me right, the case was white with a photo of Michael Jackson and the word Bad written in red. Ok, so it's not really my last record. I bought a James Taylor record when I was in Barcelona on study abroad, which is very appropriate if you read a couple posts down. And, I'm pretty sure I stole Hotel California from my folks.

Anyways, listening to records reminded me of how great it is. You have to place the needle carefully on the spinning record. It pops a couple times then starts to sing, crackling every now and then. It's good for the soul.

Reason #78143 why I love Texas

Would you believe me if I told you this was Texas? Well it is. And get this, this place is only 20 miles outside of Austin. We went climbing this weekend, and it was amazing in every way. I've climbed recreationally for years now, but I've never climbed outdoors. Andrea has recently taken up outdoor climbing so she took me on my first outdoor climbing adventure this weekend. On Saturday we went to a place in Austin called Seismic, then on Sunday we came here to Reimers Ranch. We had to hike our way back to the walls and on our way we had to pass through this. My jaw dropped when we got to this spot. It was beautiful and peaceful. Reimers reminded me of both Costa Rica and Big Bend. I joked to Andrea that this was the child of the two. It had characteristics of both, and those are two of my favorite places on earth, so naturally I fell in love with Reimers.

Climbing outdoors is thrilling. Unlike the gym, you have to find your way up the wall, whereas in a gym you follow marked holds up the wall. And in outdoor climbing someone has to set the climb. So, Andrea would lead the climb for us. Lead climbing means you take the rope with you up the wall, clipping into anchors along the way to secure you at certain intervals on the wall. Once you get to the top you clip the rope into the caribiners in the rock at the top. Whenever you are climbing away from an anchor to another you are at risk for a decent fall, double the radius to the last anchor you bolted into in, in fact. The anchors are placed fairly close to each other, but a fall would still be pretty serious, so therefore lead climbing is very serious. I'd like to get good enough to lead climb one day, and I'm certainly hooked on outdoor climbing now.

Thunderbird

The Thunderbird Motel is in Marfa, Texas. I've told you a bit about Marfa. It's a twilighty place run by a bunch of old hippies. This motel was actually renovated several years back by a well known Texas design firm, Lake Flato. To me it's Las Vegas vibe meets small New York lofts. But, it's well done and it's where we stayed when we visited a couple years ago. I obviously love the sign. I've seen photos of this sign by other photographers that are quite a bit better though. I took this photo when they sun had already gone down, but one of the best I've seen of it was when the sun was still setting and the sign lamps had just come on. That photo has lots of pinks and greens and oranges in background behind the blue sign. Maybe I'll have to go back and try again.