LOST IN MASTICATION

Ten – or tenuto – is a musical notation that indicates that you should hold the particular note a bit longer. Ten is also a decade… quite a long time.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years since @PadrePablo and I met and began a long-distance relationship.  Back then, airfare on Southwest was about $29 each way, we talked on AIM or land line… and we ran to the nearest college computer lab to see if we had an email from each other. Since then we moved in together, got married, and went back to a long-distance relationship again.

Today, we fly $49 flights, talk on Google Chat and check for emails from each other on our iPhones. (Yes, I measure time through the evolution of technology.)

Consciously or unconsciously, I must have seen a tenuto accent over PadrePablo because here we are ten years later, having accomplished more together than we had individually dreamed of back then.

Here’s to tens more years and a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my Main Man!

They say that you’ll always remember when…

I remember watching thousands of East Germans pushing through the holes in the Berlin Wall on the evening news.  And I recall Mr. Megargee telling us how important this was to our world.  But of course, I didn’t realize the enormity of the event until much, much later.

We saw pieces of the Berlin Wall at the Newseum this past year:

Behind almost every XKCD comic, there is a true story about @PadrePablo and I… or at least we can relate in a funny way.

If a picture paints a thousand words, then the smirk on @PadrePablo’s face paints a whole lot of patience as I took some 150 photos of leaves in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.  See the full set on Flickr here.

Today is the 95th anniversary of my grandmother’s birth… and 126 days since her passing.

With my paternal grandparents in the summer of 1982 (or thereabouts).

@PadrePablo was home for 98 days this summer.  And the last few days were a lot of fun as we relaxed and drove all over California with our pup, @Chibsters.

In homage to of one of the best movies we saw in theatres during these 98 days – (500) Days of Summer – we sought out Tom and Summer’s “bench” at Bunker Hill’s Angels Knoll Park.  (But not before we grabbed lunch at our favorite Phillipe’s first…)

Here, @PadrePablo explains where we are:

Apparently we weren’t the only one’s with the idea as we saw other couples strolling… asking themselves “Is that the bench?” or declaring “That’s the spot!”

This is the 360° view of the park from Tom and Summer’s bench:

And here’s a 180° view of Los Angeles from the park:

If you’re so inclined to do the same,  LA Times has an article and Google Maps tour of all the sites from the flick.

To the self-dubbed “old man”, Happy Father’s Day! [May 1984]

I just ran across this photo of mine at The Economist’s More Intelligent Life (quarterly magazine) as part of an article,  Journalism and Its Discontents in Moscow.

I license my photos under Creative Commons.  Why?  Because crowdsourcing is a beautiful thing, and it’s interesting to see where my photos get used, and what sorts of stories get associated with it.

The most bizarre to date, is definitely Bride Dies of Heart Disease on Her Wedding Day.

Happy Mother’s Day!  This POW is dedicated to my Obaasan (grandmother) who passed away a week ago this morning.

From the program that we put together for her:

Shinobu Hashimoto was born on September 6th 1914 in Los Angeles, California to Shujiro Hashimoto and Shino Hashimoto (née Yoshida).

At the age of five in 1919, she migrated with her parents to Fukui-ken, Japan, where she completed her formal education.

From age 17 (1931) to 27 (1941) – she made San Francisco the place of residence while living with her Aunt and husband – the Yamagata family.  With the uncertainty of the world situation, she returned to Japan in June 1941.

In 1947, she married Saburo Hirano who took on the Hashimoto family name.

With the birth of their son Rikio, the newly formed family migrated back to Los Angeles in 1955.

She worked at various occupations that included hotel housekeeper, seamstress, and paper-product packaging/assembler.

She is survived by her husband of 61 years, Saburo Hashimoto, son Rikio (Takako) Hashimoto, and granddaughters Sherry (Paul) Main and Starla Hashimoto.

At our friends house in Parma, Italia:

I couldn’t understand the conversations after a delicious homemade lunch… so I walked around with my camera taking random photos of the rolling hills of Parma.  Then, I tripped over this plastic pig, and this is how it landed.