The little things.

When I was a kid, I remember seeing a movie where the cool hero dude lived in a warehouse. No ordinary warehouse, either - he lived on the second floor and had a cool looking industrial freight elevator that he drove his car into, then parked his sweet muscle car ride IN his warehouse apartment. I thought that was just the coolest damn thing ever.

I'm now almost as cool as that guy. Or, possibly, cooler.

I had to take my good friend Duff in to the vet this morning and say good bye. He made it to 18; a pretty damn good run for a purebred, and up until just very recently, healthy his entire awesome life.

He used to have this little nerf golfball that he would play fetch with, up until the day that he realized that fetching things was beneath his stature. He used to love fish so much his purr would turn to a squeak when I'd give him leftovers. He always knew if I was feeling down or off, and he'd sit with me quietly for as long as I wanted.

He was my best little furry friend for a long, long time. What a fantastic little creature - I was lucky to have him in my life.

Purge!

The older I get, the more I find myself inexorably drawn to the idea of getting rid of most everything I own. Being a photographically inclined computer geek means I'd always have to hang onto my cameras and at least one computer. And I'd have to hang onto a handful of clothes and some tools, but really, how much more do I really need? I could probably get away with shipping a box of old family photos and other memories off to mom to store, and from there, pare my life down to just the barest of bare essentials. That sounds amazingly appealing to me.

The old phrase "Your possessions own you" is absolutely applicable to me; I feel like I'm enslaved to the care of my piles of crap, and I'm growing more uncomfortable with the relationship every day.

Hey, anybody need some stuff? I got lots 'o stuff, givin' it away for cheap!

Gipped.

Someone sent me a link to THIS. Please give it a read; I promise it's worth it and the rest of my post will make a tiny bit more sense if you do.

I read that and of course I cried a little, because I'm a softie and the story is just brilliant. But then it made me angry. It made me angry because I feel like I was cheated. Why didn't MY dad love being my dad? MY dad told me I was worthless (his favorite way to say it was "You're worthless as tits on a boar mule!") and stupid and commanded me to change the channel on the TV for him and then go away ("Go play in traffic!")

Why am I posting this? I'm posting this as a bit of a regret, a bit of a request. The regret comes because I've long ago decided that I don't want to have any children of my own, so I'm unable to attempt to right those wrongs. The request comes from me and goes to those of you who do have children; for fuck's sake, PLEASE love being their dad or their mom. Love that job like you love nothing else.

Also!

I need to give photo credit for a pic I used in the little banner up top; the pic of me attempting to drink a giant bottle of Corona was taken by the most excellent photog and friend, Heather Shannon. I hope she doesn't mind me using it here.

News! A Post! A new blog!

Since I'm a crappy blogger nowadays, I've decided to team up with the lovely and talented Regina (my better half) to write a blog documenting our travels.

We call it To High Places Via Narrow Roads, and we'll be posting there starting tonight.

We're leaving on a monumental two week road trip starting tomorrow, so if you'd like to see some of the things we're up to, that's the spot to check in.

Fresh.

I stopped posting to this blog back in June of last year because Blogger decided to do away with FTP, which is how I used to upload posts.  Since then, I tinkered every so often with rebuilding the blog and trying to maintain the old posts, but the changes to the blogger system meant losing all the links to any file or image that I'd uploaded.  Messy.

So I've decided to just start fresh with a new blog.  I can't imagine there are many (any?) readers left from almost a year ago, but in case there are, I thank you for sticking with me all this time.