the magic city

[downtown birmingham]

cripple creek

[my grandmother cooking breakfast thursday, mm-mm good]

pretty much ready for this here trip. clothes are laid out, one of my books has come in the mail and more are on the way, all's left is to put everything in a bag and say syonara to the South for a while.

oops, i still have a whole week until takeoff. guess i'll have to occupy myself somehow.

why not take silly pictures of myself all the livelong day?

[this is how i watch tv sometimes. i always wondered what this looked like. now i know, thank goodness.]

one of my uncles sent Grandmother four mother's day cards. he signed one of them "larry." i asked my grandmother about it and she said nobody'd ever called him larry in his life. must run in the family, since that's the kind of stunt i'd pull. man oh man, the mabrys are such tricksters.


[i'll add this picture just for kicks; i love this dress and i love this banjo. so, there you have it.]

i had a thought today. this had probably crossed all our minds at some point, maybe. why don't we take pictures of our normal, everyday lives? sure, we think they're nothing special, but that's only because we've stopped seeing the trees on the side of the road as we're driving home and don't bother to look at the sweetened condensed milk label. (there's a really cute cow on publix brand cans. i found him today.)

people sure are proud of their coffee, i know that much. everyone talks about coffee. random old men in bellingham, alabama railroaders, my friends, my family, steel mill workers, everybody who's anybody loves to talk about coffee.

the reason i mention the coffee is because lots of people, when they visit other countries, take photos of the cappuccino or signs or anything at all that they take for granted when they're at home. and i'm not using and accusatory "they," i do it too. understandably, the novelty of the italian hotel breakfast is enough to warrant a picture, but what about the breakfast at the super 8 or whatever in starkville, miss? hm? yeah i didn't think to take a picture either.

one of these days i'll start writing about interesting stuff. no promises, but i'll give it the ol' college try.

the first ever, the last ever, what's the difference?

[whitney at pevine falls today]

i saw the coolest lizard today. okay, maybe not the coolest, but he definitely looked like a tiny dinosaur. but when i pulled my camera out of my bag, the lenscap caught on the edge and sprung off and almost hit the little guy.

since i've been home, i feel like i've been spending a good bit of time lying on the floor just staring at the shadow of fan blades moving across the ceiling. plans for after graduation get crazier and crazier in my head, but somehow seem more realistic than the alternative of actually getting paid to take pictures for a living. i've got a year, anyhow.

leaves look the same all over the world when you look at them the same way:



[pelham, ala.]

[bellingham, wash.]

[amazon rainforest, ecuador]

it's things like this that i get a kick out of.