Every once in a while, I'll drop by the storage facility where I began storing stuff just before I left for Iraq. I usually go to pick up a few odds and ends.

But truth be told, the real motivation behind my occasional trips there (and the fact that I'm still storing stuff there despite the hefty monthly fee) is likely to be this view from my storage space on the 9th floor:



Yeah...if it isn't ridiculously obvious by now, that view of the Manhattan skyline is my all-time favorite subject to photograph. And of course, the photos don't do justice to the actual view of said skyline.

They're not gonna win me a Pulitzer anytime soon, but here are a few shots of the greatest city in the world.

(Click the pic to see the full-size image)










And, of course, what set of NYC photos would be complete without a Photoshop'd image of Midtown? What do you think--should I replace the current LJ masthead with this shot?



(In case you haven't noticed, I'm having a hard time writing anything serious as of late. That will hopefully change soon. I need to tell y'all how the next nine months are shaping up for me. The words are there...the desire to be real and upfront, sadly, is not.)

We had our version of Spring Break last week.

March 21st is the Kurdish New Year. It's called "Newroz," a compound word made up of the words "roz," the Kurdish word for "day," and "new," the English word for, well, "new." It's no mistake that their new year starts on the first day of Spring.

So how do the Kurds ring in the new year? Fireworks? Nope. A ball that drops at the stroke of midnight in some Times Square-like locale in Kurdistan? Hardly. The rituals were uniquely Kurdish, and with holidays being such a big deal to the folks here in Northern Iraq (as you well know from reading this LJ), we certainly did our fair share of celebrating this last week.

First, about the traditions: the majority of people here celebrate Newroz by going out of the city and having a picnic with friends and family. In that sense, it was very reminiscent of the way many Americans celebrate the 4th of July.

But the comparison breaks down here: many folks wear traditional Kurdish clothing ("jhily kurdi") and most groups will--at some point during the picnicking (if not throughout)--dance traditional Kurdish dances. More on that in a bit.

As for what we did: ( click here for a lengthy recap, complete with pics )

I've posted many more pictures on the Scrapbook site: won't you check 'em out?

So, seeing as how we had a good deal of electricity throughout the evening, and we don't have school tomorrow on account of a holiday (more on that in a bit), I decided to work on putting a few pictures up from yesterday's trip to the bazaar. I picked 8 of my favorites out of 63 shots; I hope you enjoy them. As always, I've included the obligatory preview pic ( behind this cut )

So yeah. No school tomorrow, which we found out at 10 pm tonight. In Iraq, holidays are so frequent (and often spontaneous) that they're announced on the evening news the night before said holiday. The whole thing seems kinda ridiculous, but hey, time off is time off, right?

Though, truth be told, I'd rather be at the school. I'm going to miss being around the kids tomorrow.

Beatty seems to get a little weirder each time I come home. I suppose you could make the case that I'm the one that's changing, and not so much the town; that having lived in large cities has tweaked my perspective of Beatty over the years.

But in truth, the weirdness I feel in coming home this time has been compounded by the fact that Beatty--over the span of the last few years--has managed to become something of a modern-day ghost town, to the point that there's practically nothing left. Not like that's difficult: there wasn't much here to begin with.

But driving around the last few days, it's become clear that very little of the town I grew up in is still here. Beatty now mostly consists of boarded-up buildings, the abandoned shells that speak of the life that once inhabited them.

Oddly enough, I'm also finding this place to be more fascinating than I ever used to.

And so, I took a couple shots today to show you what a strange place my hometown is. ( Enjoy! )

And yes, one of these days, I'll get around to writing a real post.

Pictures of DT's first attempts at teaching: ( here )

Courtesy of my boy rynostevie, here are a few photos that will accompany me on my trip to Germany and then into Iraq these next two weeks:

( behind the cut )

OK, so maybe the first theory was a little too sinister. It's entirely possible that Pete Carroll isn't as evil as we first guessed. He might use the motivational technique mentioned earlier, albeit in a slightly-different way:

( behind the cut )

A few weeks ago, I chatted online with my best friend from high school. It was the first time in ages that we'd had a chance to catch up, and he directed me to his Yahoo! photo album where he'd posted shots of his baby girl from over the past year. In return, I sent him to my LiveJournal Scrapbook, which was admittedly pretty sparse (there's more pictures of the City than there are of me and my friends).

So that's when I decided: I'm going to post pictures from college.

For over two years, I've been meaning to put together a "best of the best" photo album with the photographic highlights of my tenure at SC. I had the pictures all picked out, and had even written some of the captions to go along with 'em, but, being a lazy person who lacks the focus to complete even the simplest of projects, it fell by the wayside.

So I decided to make it digital. Y'know, "the way of the future," and all that. And since I've got the photo account with LJ, I figured it could go up there; that way, you can glance at the pics at your own leisure (whereas, if you were to visit me, I would force you to sit down and look at every single photo and listen to my inane commentary on each. Seriously. Just ask kuhn).

I stayed home from work yesterday because of a lousy cold, and since I finally had some free time, I started scanning picture after picture into the computer. Even though I'm only including my absolute favorites from each year (and in my senior year alone I took like 24,000 pictures) it's still a rather tedious process. I'm only one year into the whole ordeal, but it's a start (again, time will tell if I have the focus to finish this project; my guess is that I don't).

So, if you're interested in seeing photos from my Senior year at USC--which, basically, amount to shots of me with my friends and/or the Mr. USC sash in assorted locales--check it out here.

It's a nice trip down memory lane for me; perhaps it will be for some of you as well.

OK, here's another half-dozen shots I've taken in the last week, most of which were taken earlier during our evening spent at Madison Square Park.

I'm still toying around with the camera and the computer's photo editing software (these shots were all touched up using Apple's iPhoto), but I'm more or less pleased with how the shots turned out. Here's the obligatory sample to whet your appetite (or steer you clear from the rest...one or the other):



I'll save the explanations for later. It's way past my bedtime.

UPDATE @ 9:25 AM: OK, so looking at the pics on another computer screen, I'm a bit disappointed with the "enhancements" made with iPhoto. I think I'll stick to Photoshop.

This time, of Central Park. I spent my Friday afternoon/evening chillin' in the Park, and I was smart enough to bring my camera (now if I could only learn to use the stupid thing). At any rate, I picked my five favorites and posted 'em here.

( My favorite of the bunch happens to be this one. )

All the picture-taking yesterday got me thinking (and yes, this qualifies as Dave's Crazy Idea of the Week): seeing as how I take a ton of cityscape pictures, I should take the best shots and compile them in a nice little book. Y'know, something cutesy that'll highlight some of my favorite New York visuals. It might end up being something I do for myself, OR, it might make a nice little fundraiser for future endeavors. Granted, I probably wouldn't make a lot of money with a book of amateur photography, and that was never my intention, really...so maybe, yeah, scratch the whole fundraiser idea. But creating a book of my favorite cityscape shots for personal enjoyment still seems like a pretty cool idea that I think I'll attempt at some point here.

Wait wait wait...fundraiser? Future endeavors? Uh, yeah. I'm being purposefully vague right now, but I promise I'll explain it all very soon. All in good time, my friends. All in good time.

A'right, as promised, more pics from the gig:



And there's more where that came from...Selina took a ton of great shots, so I picked out 15 for your enjoyment. Lemme know what you think!

I'll be uploading several more to my FotoBuilder account and posting a quick report...all in due time. For now, sleep awaits.

What a great evening.

(OK, one more post before going to bed.)

For some reason, this made me laugh out loud when I walked by our next-door neighbors' house on Sunday morning:

( click here to see )

Maybe it's because of the insistence that "hoodlums" spilled the paint, which suggests that this was an intentional and malicious act. And if that's the case, then considering that the spilled paint (of an innoxious light color) doesn't stretch more than a few feet in diameter, these must be some pretty weak-sauce hoodlums if this is the best they can do.

Or maybe it's because of the way the sign reads, which leads me to think that maybe this was an art piece called "Spilled Paint" by the artist "Hoodlums." And if that's the case, then the artist's exploration of the socio-geographic (and other) implications of spilled paint has surely raised a lot of questions in my mind. And in the end, isn't that what good art does?

So, either this is shoddy vandalism or it's brilliant artwork. I can't decide.