This is Rick. My sister took me to FAO Schwartz to put him together, a birthday gift months in the making. Like me, he enjoys a good Irish whiskey from time to time. Perhaps too much.
All in all I had a fantastic day today. Started out at FAO Schwartz with my sister, then to lunch at a great little burger bistro, followed by Alice in Wonderland (which I’m apparently in the minority for enjoying). After my sister and I parted ways, I went off to meet up with some buddies for amazing steak at Keen’s Chophouse, which was immediately followed by drinks at Tempest Bar, where I met and got on with two really cool bartenders. Though if we’re being brutally honest, I think Rick hogged most of the limelight tonight. He got cozy with one of the bartenders, got hit on by a drunk dude, had his picture taken twice, and attracted more than a little attention at the otherwise-quiet bar. That’s definitely much better than I average.
Perhaps I should just start bringing him with me wherever I go. I wonder if he could get me out of traffic tickets.
It was my birthday over the weekend, and I spent it in Jersey with friends, doing nothing but play video games, watch movies, lounge, and read.
It was wonderful.
All that relaxing can be pretty tiring, however, and I haven’t quite recovered from it yet (as I was pretty busy today) so today’s update will be little more than this shot of a random traveler spotted in Penn Station. He’s not the real Epic Beard Man, but as the original is more of a Beard Man who happens to be Epic and this guy is more of a Man who happens to have an Epic Beard, I figure the distinction is enough to let it pass.
Spotted this while walking along the water earlier today. It was accompanied by a few photos showing a middle-aged man posing on or with his motorcycle, tooling around in the garage, and the like. I think the casualness of the photos — as opposed to the usual memorial photos, which tend to show a person in their ‘Sunday Best,’ — made the whole thing seem more real. A snapshot from a wedding reception or a graduation photo just shows the face; seeing someone in their element, with the things they love, shows the person. Looking over the photos tacked to the tree, it was obvious that a person, not a face, was dearly missed.
When I die, I hope they use the photo from my “About Me” page, or something similarly silly. I don’t take myself seriously in life, I’d hate to start after I was dead.
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Minimal post on this one, just some basic tone and curve adjustment, and a black & white conversion from there.
Went for a walk on my lunch break (worked from home today) and passed a running track, where a bundled-up runner was doing laps. Winter runners always make me feel especially lazy. I can’t be bothered to run when it’s nice out, and these guys are running in cold winter weather. Oof.
Post-processing was fairly minimal on this one. I added a gradient filter on the top to bring out a little more color in the sky and did some basic level and curve adjustments. I also did a tiny clone job to clean out a distracting part of lamppost in the upper-right corner.
This has been my view for much of the three-day weekend. I wish I could blame my sloth on illness or other, but I got over my cold sometime on Thursday or Friday. It has been raining, though. That miserable, cold, chilling rain. It’s a pity, too, because it’s “warmed up some” and actually hit the mid-40s this weekend. If not for the rain, I might’ve been incensed to go out and do something.
Truth be told, however, I don’t really mind. There are worse ways to spend a weekend than catching up on Dexter and playing Assassin’s Creed II. Perhaps my inner ursine is in full hibernation mode. Why go out into the cold, foreboding, berry-less wilderness when you can camp out in your nice, warm, broadband-enabled cave? Besides, every evening spent indoors is another evening I don’t waste my money on hookers and blow kittens and lollipops.
Maybe I should grow a beard.
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