As David would title this, "Tidbits."

Brooks demands a lot from us poor students. It's nice that they want to make these classes as close to the "real world" as possible like having assignments with one-hour deadlines and all that jazz. But it sucks when you don't have a laptop and can't transmit your photos while out in the field. I guess it's expected that you have a laptop by the time you enter your final year here. Unfortunately, I haven't quite given into taking out an extra hefty loan just to buy myself a laptop. They make us buy our own digital cameras along with its accessories, it's pretty absurd that I would have to go out and spend an extra $1500 for a decent laptop.

I shouldn't complain. I'm the one who chose to come to this school. What was I thinking???

Anyhow, things have been pretty hectic. Friday and Saturday were especially crazy, and I was completely burned out by Sunday. Being a bum never felt more rewarding than today. Yesterday I had a gig with The American Enterprise Magazine to shoot four family portraits for an article. The growing Catholic community has created its own sub-culture in Santa Paula, and so they needed someone to get portraits of the families and the Father of one of the churches there. The pictures turned out okay. They could have been better, but then again...they can always be better. Because the lights I brought malfunctioned, I was stuck using my one and only flash. Oh, well. Things happen. I'm getting paid for this, so I'm happy. Hopefully the art director of the magazine will be happy too. :P

A couple weeks ago I watched the entire Firefly series and Serenity. I've been meaning to do that for a while now, and it was well worth the three days spent watching it. One of the better sci-fi shows that came out in the last few years. It's a shame that it got canceled after its first season. Fox should have known better. Well, Fox should just know better about a lot of things.

I also saw V for Vendetta last week, and Inside last night. I enjoyed both of them. Natalie Portman never ceases to amaze me with her superb acting skills and her awesomely good hotness. Clive Owen is the bomb. Denzel Washington actually plays a role where he's calm 90% of the movie and isn't screaming at the top of his lungs. It's sort of funny the only role that Hugo Weaving can land is one where he doesn't show his face, but he played V very well. The action is good in "V for V." Inside Man is clever and the story was well-delivered.

Oli and Nem came to visit for Saturday, and that was a lot of fun. We went out to lunch at the Habit. Hung out and watched lots of Family Guy. The Bozarths threw a party to honor Morgan's acheivement in running in the LA Marathon last week. Makes me feel like a bum. Oh wait...I am. Anyway, Oli and Nem didn't mind the party much, but I could tell they didn't have a blast. That's okay because we left early to watch Inside Man. We win.

Oh yeah, I finally compressed a video slideshow of my photographs over the years for the web, so you can view that now here. I threw a link to it on my blog a while back, but I sort of did it in a subtle way; and only the most keen of internet surfers could catch it. Anyway, that was a low-res version of it, this one is a higher-res and much bigger version. It's about 30 mb, so be patient.

Enjoy life!