zutroy.net

So for the last couple years I have kind of put photography on hold because of time and money issues. Mostly time. But since we closed Main10 almost a year ago, I have felt the photo bug inside me trying to get out. The kind of film I like to shoot with gets rather expensive and the only good digital camera I have had access to doesn’t quite cut it.

I did get a hold of a half decent DSLR while I was in Amsterdam and I got some really nice shots there, but that has really been the extent of the photo excursions since my last photo class.

But something fantastic happened this week. Joel got a new camera. And he has humbly asked me to babysit his 20D while he isn’t using it as a second camera for some wedding shoots. We went and explored the last of the autumn colors Tuesday and I remembered how much I love photography. Even though we didn’t have very good conditions or light, we had a good time and got some decent shots.

Now as both of you know, I’m looking for a traditional job, the 9 to 5 (or close to it) type. I am hoping/expecting that since I’ll have more free time and a good digital camera at my disposal that I’ll be able to start shooting again. I may even put up a photo blog.

When I first saw Pandora, I thought it was lame. “So you don’t get to keep the songs? Why would I like that?”

But I needed my own opinion so I tried it out. And it was a miserable failure. I started an alternative station based on Depeche Mode. Then it played Erasure. I hate Erasure. So I told it so. Understanding how Pandora works now, I have to laugh at my folly. I almost missed out on a great thing. But I gave it one more shot.

I started a techno station because I like techno but I didn’t really know who I liked.

Lo and behold, it worked. It’s been over 4 years now and I pandora everyday. I have even considered paying but I don’t mind the way they do their ads. Sometimes I even like the ads. So I am still a Pandora freeloader.

But then this week, I hit my monthly limit of 40 hours and I can’t listen anymore on my computer. I can on my iPhone though, not sure why. But I like speakers more than headphones. I want Pandora on my computer. At first I was angry, but then I understand the business side of it. They have bills to pay. They have managed to stay afloat despite the most sincere efforts of the RIAA to shut them down. How can I be angry, it’s like getting mad at your infant when it is hungry. You just can’t do that.

I’ll pay I guess. But not now, I’ll need some steady income before I can justify that. In the meanwhile I have dusted off the ol’ MP3 files. I miss some of these. I’ll have to make sure I put them on my include list as soon as Oct 1 rolls around.

My wife loves “My Best Friends Wedding”, I don’t know how many times we have watched it. When I first watched it, I had never tried Crème Brulee. But I had tried Jell-o. And honestly I don’t really like Jell-o. And sorry Kimmy, you could never be Jell-o. Crème Brulee could NEVER be Jell-o.

It made me want to try crème brulee. And then I noticed a boxed crème brulee at the local Harman’s. I couldn’t pass that up. And Julia was right, Jell-o could never be crème brulee. So now when we eat out at a new place, we score them on two main things; their calamari, and their crème brulee.

When we got into the cooking phase of our marriage, we started looking for the right crème brulee recipe. Failure after failure we couldn’t get it right. Either it would come out like flan or quesillo or it would come out like a bad pudding gone more bad.

Then the other day I stumbled onto the most simple recipe for crème brulee that I had seen. It seemed too simple. But so simple that I couldn’t write it off without trying it first. And it had good ratings and comments so I had to try it right?

So I tried it. And HOLY CRAP! It worked. This was the best crème brulee that I had tried. Ever. Even better than the 4 star hotel in Amsterdam.

So you want me to share it with you? Hmmm, I think this recipe might be too good to share. Sure, you could stumble upon it like I did, but if you don’t read the right comments on that website, and try the same mistakes I made when preparing it, it won’t turn out the same.

Maybe if you ask nicely, I’ll make some and invite you over to try it. Maybe after a nice Italian sausage lasagna dinner.

Hmmm, I think this means I have to learn how to do the perfect calamari now…

So ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to have a big sailboat. I designed some catamarans, and trimarans back when I was in my “design big machines and weapons phase” of jr. high school. And they always seemed like one of those types of dreams that’s just unreachable. So I never really thought about it as a possibility, just a dream.

Then about 2 months ago Dave shipped off to Monterey to learn to speak towel head. Monterey is full of real estate. All of it with insane prices. So he looked at the possibility of living on a boat. He even found a 54 footer for sale in LA for $12,000.

Wait, that’s big enough for a family to live on. $12,000? That can’t be right. Granted, it wasn’t a sailboat, but still. So then he found out that the mooring fee for anywhere in the bay area is like $1000/month or more. So he didn’t do it.

But it got me thinking, if I had a reliable internet connection, I wouldn’t have to live in a big bay in CA, I could go find a little hurricane safe harbor in say, the DR. What would be the cost of living there? $500/month? I could deal with that. I work remotely or COULD have worked remotely for 4 of the last 5 places where I have worked. And my kids could get to know both sets of grandparents. I could go spear fishing any time I wanted. Rome, the Riviera, exotic islands, New England, they are all suddenly reachable in a lazy, fashionable, but not quite on vacation kind of way.

Hmmm, so now I’ve really been looking into this. It’s not as unreachable as I always thought it was. In fact, sailboats are largely more affordable than motor-only boats. So now I just need to learn to sail. I figure a summer or two spending every Saturday on Utah Lake and then a year or two on a coast or an island with something that’s a little less ocean going would prepare me for it. That and I probably need a friend like Captain Ron.