This week’s Photo Challenge wants to see fresh, which it defines as a state (new, recent, previously unknown) and a taste or sensation (cool, sweet, invigorating, refreshing).
There is nothing fresher than trying something fun for the first time.
Weekly Photo Challenge
Talk About Refreshing!
On summer afternoons, a lovely breeze comes through this window. What better place to plant one’s hindquarters for a nap?
Aaaaaahhhhh.
This week’s Photo Challenge wants to see fresh, which it defines as a state (new, recent, previously unknown) and a taste or sensation (cool, sweet, invigorating, refreshing).
Fresh Bloom
This week’s Photo Challenge wants to see fresh, which it defines as a state (new, recent, previously unknown) and a taste or sensation (cool, sweet, invigorating, refreshing).
This hibiscus blossom has just opened to grace my patio for a day.
Newest bloom in the garden.
My Fresh Son
This week’s Photo Challenge wants to see fresh, which it defines as a state (new, recent, previously unknown) and a taste or sensation (cool, sweet, invigorating, refreshing). There is an additional state of fresh and when the dictionarists adds it, they are welcome to illustrate the concept with a photo of my son.
New guitar picks have many applications.
Exerting self-control during a visit to Grandma and Grandpa.
All the Blues Imaginable
One of the great treats about being alive and on this planet is getting to see the ocean at sunrise and sunset. I am always staggered by the number of different colors in the water. I’ve yet to get a photo that comes close to capturing it, but maybe that’s okay. Because I don’t have a photo I need to keep going back to see the real thing.
The full moon sets and the sun rises at Carlsbad Beach, San Diego County, California
(Posted for the latest Weekly Photo Challenge.)
Manhattan, Very Early
Last year I got to take my kids to New York for a few days. Our return flight was early one morning. I love this shot of my son – up way before his body clock would usually allow – taking in his last views of Manhattan before we departed. We were almost the only ones up…
Goodbye, New York.
Another crack-o’-dawn morning on the trip, my daughter and I walked out to the East River to watch the sun rise. That’s my daughter huddled on the side of the photo – it was colder than we had anticipated.
OK, we saw the sunrise, now let’s go back to bed.
(Posted for the latest Weekly Photo Challenge.)
Natural Sepia Tinting
Just after sunrise on the trails at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, California, the sunlight added a sepia tint to this trail and a grove of eucalyptus trees.
An empty trail just after sunrise.
Eucalyptus trees at dawn.
(Posted for the latest Weekly Photo Challenge.)
Magical Retaining Wall
A decrepit retaining wall along the shore becomes magic as sunset approaches.
Pilings on East Beach, Santa Barbara, California
(Posted for the latest Weekly Photo Challenge.)
Shooting Into The Sun
One thing I love about my iphone’s camera is that it endlessly compensates for poor choices — such as shooting directly at the sun – with frequently lovely results.
The view just after sunrise on the hiking trails at Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California
(Posted for the latest Weekly Photo Challenge.)
DIY Writing Career
The latest Weekly Photo Challenge focuses on nostalgia and these photos conjure nostalgia in so many ways!
My writing room. Tile floor by me. Fake fur chair by Los Angeles designer Harry Segil. Back in those days, I worked in Hollywood and supported only me, so I had money for snazzy chairs.
In these photos is a tile floor I laid myself. Laying the floor took a long time, but not nearly so long as coming up with a design I liked. When I did the floor, I listened over and over to two record albums by my favorite band the Replacements: Tim, which had just come out, and Let It Be. There is still a bit of grout on the LP labels.
This was the room where I did my writing, and I wanted it to be special. I furnished it during the first of the mid-century revivals. I loved writing in that room. It was here that I wrote my psychological thriller about split brain research*, ?Was It A Rat I Saw?, under contract to Bantam-Doubleday-Dell. BDD gave me an advance to write ?Rat?, so for a year, my only job was writing. Bliss!
I published ?Rat? then I stopped writing novels for a long time, until I resumed with Scar Jewelry, my novel about family and music, which I wrote on weekend mornings in between everything else. I had forgotten how great it is to have writing as my only work, until the last couple weeks: I am laid up convalescing after hip replacement surgery and am getting a ton of writing done. More bliss! In fact, I expect to complete a first draft of my new fantasy detective novel, Frames, before I have to return to the d-a-y j-o-b.
I am writing Frames on my iPad, as I recently posted. I wrote ?Rat? on a technology of equal or surpassing greatness, the IBM Correcting Selectric typewriter. Kids, you had to be there to appreciate it.
More of my tile floor, and the world’s greatest writing machine: the IBM Correcting Selectric typewriter.
P.S. Contrary to what this image shows, the desk did stand plumb with the floor. I “digitized” these old prints by photographing them with my phone and that introduced the skew.
*P.P.S. Another post-op project has been to convert ?Was It A Rat I Saw? to an e-book. That new edition should be available in 4-6 weeks.
P.P.P.S. Harry still makes amazing furniture, worth an oogle regardless of your price range.
Required Writing 