susan & jon's sunday barbeque

"baby tunnel"

in a drunken stupor, i ordered this online for the cats. i figured they would have a blast with it...they still do of course, but they only inherited it after jeff and i finished playing with it.

08.08.08

visitor

every morning. for peanuts.

sunday at golden gardens park

bonfire at alki beach

alki beach is in west seattle. jon hosted a bonfire complete with beer and s'mores!

jeff jr. cookin up some ribs

oakland california

GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY

seattle's annual gay pride event is always a hoot. gay boys, gay girls and parties galore! it usually occurs in late june over the course of a week and ends with a march downtown as well as a huge party at the seattle center. this year, there was a dyke march down broadway that passed right in front of brian's house. dykes + booze = partytime!!

breakfast + sun + gus

Zen, Utah

i have been reading a fair amount lately. i just finished my third book by cheri huber called "how to get from where you are to where you want to be". in a nutshell, it's an intro to zen. i have begun reading "big mind big heart" by dennis genpo merzel. it is a different perspective on the same topic really. i also flew to salt lake city to participate in a week-long zen retreat. i won't go into details because i have told the story way too many times, but basically, i arrived on sunday afternoon, participated in the evening orientation and met lots of great people. then i awoke at 5 am monday, sat silently through 2 40-minute meditation sessions, then grabbed my shoes and left. it was a crazy, amazing, intense and beautiful place...but it was much too much for me at the time. i went back to my room and called allysia angus, a friend of mine that i met in college. she lives five hours south of slc in escalante, utah. i asked if she would mind terribly if i rented a car and crashed with her for a week, and fortunately, she said "come on down!"
i was on the road by 11 am, and five hours later i was in one of the most beautiful places in the world. allysia has been building her house for awhile now, and i even got to help her a little bit while visiting (can't wait to return in september with jeff and see the finished product). so basically, i found the experience i was looking for. i found peace, i found answers, and i found lots and lots of love...for myself as well as for the cowboys!
below are some pics of allysia's work in progress. i'll post some of the finished home later in the year. also, there is one of me, allysia and her friend nancy taken in salt lake city the day before i returned to seattle.

dinner time

when i was in high school, the home economics teacher, mary guill, tricked some of the boys into taking home ec by making up a bogus name for a class called "adult living". according to her, it would be a class where we would arrange fake marriages, learn to do taxes, banking, household budgets...useful things like that. i really thought that would be cool. we ended up doing nothing more than learning to make an omelet and briefly discussing the reproductive cycle....the southern christian version of the story mind you. the apron in this picture was actually an "end of term" project. i found the fabric in the back of mom's closet and paid lee bullock $25 to sew it for me. i got an a. i still love it.

PS3 party with dan's dad!!

funny nose cup

friends 101

obviously, these aren't all of them, but here are some of my favorite portraits i've taken of friends. brian and i had each of these blown up into huge black and white posters to hang throughout the house for our 2007 birthday party. a few of them are still up because i love looking at them. i always say i'm going to get some of my photos professionally printed and framed, but i'm always saying something.

keith
jon
lisa
jeff
ava

donna
brian
susan
dan
kevin

constance
blake
jeff & hazen
kobalt (click on the image and you will see me and jeff!)

a day out for gus

picnic with ava

This picture was taken in July 2006 at Donna & Kevin's house. I don't remember if I was asleep at this point, but I was sleeping off and on. Ava is their daughter and was only a mere tot. Oh how they grow.
I met Donna around 13 years ago through Brian. We hit it off immediately (even though she did, in fact, warn Brian to stay away from me because I drank too much and touched the wacky weed a time or two!!). Then I met Kevin shortly after that. More about them later.

E&C

I began working at the Elephant & Castle Pub almost 10 years ago. (August 12 is my anniversary date.) I've had good times and bad, but mostly good. I can't even begin to explain how amazing it has been to meet some of the people who have crossed my path. I have made many friends...lost a few as well over the years...and I like to think that I have contributed to countless nice vacations for visitors. Hell, I even met Morrissey one night and sat down with him and Brian for a conversation. That alone was worth the ten year investment. Here are some pics of my bar. Of course they would be much nicer with me in them, but oh well, you can't have everything.

happy birthday dad.

my older brother is wayne.
my younger brother is byron. he is my half brother.
my stepmom is debbie.
my dad is bennie.

today is dad's birthday. while jeff and i were at the laundromat today, i gave him a birthday call. it seems he had a minor eye surgery last week and is in the middle of the 4 days he took off work. all went smoothly, and aside from a bit of blurriness, the worst is over.
"it's not bad," my dad said, "i'm just supposed to rest a lot. i can't lift anything heavy so debbie has to go to the bathroom with me."

happy birthday dad.

okay...

new title...sorta lame maybe, but until i think of a better one, this is what we get...
i walked out of my house last weekend, and these two lovers caught me completely off-guard.
gus and peggy (and even a curious crow) were watching the two go at it for quite awhile. i grabbed my camera and caught this shot. they cuddled for about an hour.
cuteness has no boundaries.

giving in....sorta.

hey folks.  so, i'm giving up on the 366 project.  i am a month into it, and i have realized that once is enough.  it was a big challenge to keep up with the photo-a-day thing when i did it 2 years ago (see the 365 link to the right), and i almost quit a few times then.  

this time around, i am feeling obligated to take pictures.  i'm beating myself up for forgetting my camera.  i'm constantly looking for new things to photograph, and i'm not finding a whole lot of inspiration.  all in all, it's not fun like it should be.  so, i've decided to abort this daily thing and sort of move in a different direction.  i will still post photos and such here, so please check back from time to time if you are interested, but they will come more randomly.  so there.

hope life is grand!!!

imac

102.4 F

scratch n play

macrame

mvp

laura was recently voted 2007 mvp at my workplace. mvp of course is a fresh, new, straight man's way of saying "employee of the year". ...god i hate sports.
anyway, at our company party last week, i handed off the sash and the tiara to laura (because yes, i was the 2006 mvp after all) and lots of tears were shed....tears of joy of course...well, except mine...because after losing one's sash, there's not much else left in the world.

kitten & beth

kitten and beth dropped by my bar today for a couple of stress-relieving, after-work libations. i snapped a photo and explained my 366 project. they happily granted me permission to post their photo.
kitten asked what i was going to call the photo, or what caption i would use.
beth said "he'll call it 'a couple of sluts'."
i replied, "nah, i'll probably make something up."

poser

scrutinized

cooking borscht

monster box

in moonlight

sorry, but you folks are gonna see a lot of gus. those eyes make me crazy! if i was a horny girl cat, i'd be all over this guy.

frostbite

crabbies in the sun

i have crabs. hermit crabs. they live in a luxurious beach side resort in my living room. these creatures have always fascinated me...the way they communicate, their ability to walk vertically up (or down!) any surface with the slightest crevices...i could go on, but then i'd sound like a crab geek, and the only thing worse than a crab geek is an iguana geek.
jeff and i made a spontaneous stop at petsmart last weekend, and even though i had vowed to stop adding to my little crabbie family (that is intended to sound gross), i couldn't help myself. there was this one little fellow sitting a bit wonky, with a cracked shell and a missing leg, looking through the glass of the tank at nothing in particular. i assumed he was either crazy or depressed, but it didn't really matter. i fell in love (gross, again).
an employee wandered over and i heard a noise inside my head. a faint beeping.
"what is that?" i thought to myself.
ignoring it, i asked if i could take the little guy out of the tank and have a look.
"sure" the guy said. "i'm usually working over in the animal hospital next door. my husband is the vet."
"aah!" i responded, but not so much to him as to myself. gaydar... i'd gotten so emotionally involved with the crab that i failed to recognize the familiar sound in my head.
"i'll take him," i said, "and that big red one there too!"
hopefully, the two new crabs are happier now. they have bonded, adjusted, and now stroll on their own private beach with five other friends.

daniel

cala lily

photo of the day

courtney loves pancakes

courtney and jeff have been friends since high school in connecticut. in fact, they both drove to seattle from the east coast together and decided to stay. i met courtney's mother, jeana, last week while in east granby. jeff stopped by her workplace to say hello, and i was introduced. jeana told us a story about a woman courtney had recently met in seattle. apparently, the woman had looked at courtney and said "you're a jew and your mother's a whore."
"courtney phoned me," said jeana, "and said hey mom, i met this woman today...and she's psychic!"
i loved her instantly.

mark

catnip fix

winter blooms

christopher

apparently, they are naming winter storms now and not just hurricanes. this one in particular was supposed to bring up to 12 inches of snow to east granby this morning, but fortunately, the predictions were off by 8. no delays or cancellations at the airport. whew.

clan

before leaving new hampshire, we all posed for a last minute photo. i am proud to be a part of the averill family history now, to whatever degree that may be. i find it only fitting that my new year of peace and self-discovery should begin like this...with much love and a sense of family that i have never experienced. technically, i did not take this photo, but the gentleman that did captured the moment brilliantly with my camera. hopefully, he won't mind if i take credit.

secret lovers

east hill farm

friendly's

gorby

jeff and i flew to east granby, connecticut today to visit his family. from here, we drove to east hill farm, an inn in new hampshire, for the weekend. this is gorby, jeff's cat (named after mikhail gorbachev) posing with a photo i took of jeff. she is 16 and loves to play with erasers.

packed

vinyl

this shot is a detail from a record that brian picked up years ago for a quarter. the artist: phylicia allen (now rashad). the album: josephine superstar. the album was composed and produced in 1978 by jacques morali, the brains behind the village people (who actually do backing vocals on this very record). i guess i have to label morali a hero of mine simply because his music, along with that of giorgio moroder, was the first i could relate to...a hint of a self-identity that i didn't understand at the time. unfortunately, aids took his life at the early age of 45.

welcome rat

 

mates

 

urban forest

 

ritual

 

resolution

 

on/off