Emily and I have one particular playground at Randolph School that we like to visit. This time she found a leaf she really liked and she was showing it off to me. This is one of my favorite pictures that I've taken of her.

I went to Palo Duro Canyon for Thanksgiving. The sunset was spectacular but I didn't get a picture. I promised myself to get one the next day. Unfortunately the one I captured wasn't as captivating as the previous one. This sunset was from a backroad in west Texas where the foothills meet the high plains.

I've also begun to reflect on all the changes I've had for 2005. Julie. IMaCS. Home Ownership.

I miss Em. While I had more free time than usual I was trying to squeeze in some time back in Huntsville with Emily but Em's mom didn't come up with anything. I think things are extra hectic over there since Emily is going to have a new brother or sister real soon now.

My unofficial vacation is about to come to an end. I start a 4 month contract-to-hire position doing perl development either this Monday or a week later. I have a plone/python project, a php/mysql and a unix admin project to wrap up. The company I'm going to work for is up in North Dallas right near where I lived when I first moved here in '99. Apparently insurance companies rarely pay all of their bills to hospitals and doctors. This company uncovers the difference in what the insurance companies owe and what they paid and gets the rest of the money. So it's nice to stick it to the insurance companies for once. :)

This is the first job I've gotten that wasn't based on referrals from friends, although Tina did refer me to the recruiters that found the job. I had always wondered if I have the skills to do it on my own.

Now that the basics are taken care of, it's time to play and have fun with life.

RD2 and I parted ways yesterday. It will be nice to have some time to take care of the parts of my life I neglected while I was working for RD2. Right now I'm torn between sticking with just contract work, or going full bore for a full-time position. I have some ideas about web based applications that I want to flesh out and if I go back to full-time that complicates that ambition. Also I've got enough contract opportunities right now to take care of me.

In a few hours I'm going to be getting on an airplane with Julie that will fly to Chicago. I do not enjoy flying as it comes with this intense fear of falling to my death. It wasn't always like that for me. I think getting to spend the weekend with Julie and her friends in Chicago will help make up for the nightmare that is flying. I'll be flying back alone on Sunday night.

Maybe someday they'll have a camel route between Dallas and Chicago. I could totally do that.

I made it past tax day. I'm caught up at work. I have time to read books, watch movies and see Julie.

A friend took this picture of me at the end of July in 2004. It's from a field of kudzu near the Sock Capital of the World, Fort Payne, Alabama.

I feel like I've grown a lot already this year.

[ edited 3/18/05 10:14am ]

I snagged this picture back in Huntsville one afternoon. I'm really surprised by how well the camera captured what I was looking at. I was looking through the small group of photos I made to use for headline images and this one grabbed me. The clouds are parting, the sun is coming out and I'm heading in the right direction. It really captured the spirit of how my life is going right now.

As my guide, Ahmed, and I trekked through the Sahara along the Algerian border I was really taken in by the beauty. I love the clean, mathematical lines that trail into noise where animals have tread on them. The wind, rain and gravity effect the sand in very specific ways. The math behind them is so enormous that we have problems modeling their behavior with supercomputers, and yet you can see that mathematical precision in the sand. No matter how elegant those macro forces are the animals come plodding through leaving a noisy wake in the sand.

This is a house in eastern Montana on a dirt road on the way between Pompey's Pillar and the Little Bighorn battleground. One of the reasons that I travel is because I want to find a place that is home. I take lots of pictures of empty homes when I'm traveling. I'd never really thought about why. I think I take those pictures because I wonder if this home might be the one.

This was one of the last pictures I took before moving out of Dallas and back to Huntsville a little over a year ago. It's overlooking Mockingbird station at the Angelika theater. While I was in Huntsville I sought refuge at the theater there and came to refer to my weekly visits as going to church. Well, I am happy to be back where I can really dig into "church" with both feet. I never found the movie community that I'd hoped to find in Huntsville and for whatever reason a solid movie community seems to bring me the peace, understanding and enlightenment that church brings others.

In February of 2004 I took a trip to Morocco to fulfill a promise that had been a long time in coming. Ever since reading Paul Bowles' 1949 classic "The Sheltering Sky" I had longed to visit the Sahara and North Africa. The wish began at 19 and was fulfilled as turned 30. It was riveting and overwhelming.

Omar, the Berber guide, and I spent five days camping in the desert. In that time I sought refuge from a sand storm with a nomad family in their enormous tent. I had my tent torn to pieces in a rain storm one night. I trekked through high, sandy winds for a couple of days. Omar and I spent a lot of time talking when he'd prepare meals or while we'd pitched tents or packed up. I don't think the experience would have been anywhere near as rich without his insights and friendship.

When I look at this picture now I can't help but wish I had some kind of guide for my own life at this moment.

Michael and Maria take advantage of their remote location to burn large piles of trash from time to time. One a cold, winter night I had the privilege of participating. I was surprised by how high the flames went at times and that nothing else caught fire.

Now the image has become iconic to me. Out with the old, in with the new. As my friend Dave Gallman used to say "Before every act of creation is an act of destruction." I think about it when I'm contemplating changes in my life.

Picture taken in February 2004.

The Place dJemaa el-Fna is one of the most amazing places I've ever been. I had always heard about the medinas of Morocco but this is the place that blew me away. At night the square fills with vendors, story tellers, snake charmers, pick pockets, drug dealers, acrobats and all sorts of other folk. The atmosphere was intoxicating and I meandered in open-mouthed awe around the square. I was lucky to be there right after the Moroccan soccer team had won second place in the Africa's Cup. The whole country was going nuts, and especially in that square.

This picture was taken by a snake charmer. I have a small snake in my hand and they have numerous cobras spread out around them. Shortly after this he wrapped a cobra around my neck and showed me off to the crowd. I was left clutching at the snake's head wondering if it was poisonous. They took more pictures of me with the cobra on. Shortly after that he clandestinely hit me up for 200 dirham, or about $20. This was still early on in my trip and I hadn't really grasped that everything has a price, or the importance of setting that price beforehand. I didn't feel in a position to bargain with him so I quietly dropped some money down for him and walked away.

This picture was taken 9/11/2004. I'd gone downtown to read in the park. As the sun was setting I ran up a municipal parking garage to get to the top and take the picture.

I've found Big Spring Park to be one of Huntsville's greatest assets. It's one of the few parts of the city that betrays the "cheaper and ugly is best" ethos. When I say that I'm talking about the over abundance of engineers in Huntsville. Engineers want to spend as little money as possible, and do not see asthetics or culture as worth paying extra for. Huntsville has paid the price as things have been maintained at just the base level.

Big Spring park was a lot more of a cesspool when I was growing up but it's improved a lot while I've been gone. The city has an ambitious plan to revamp the whole downtown area. If there's any hope for Huntsville I think it starts in this park. It's a powerful testament to the importance of beauty, public commons, and utility.

This picture was taken on a 8/12/2003 during a trip through North Dakota and Montana. I'd gone up there to take pictures of locations used in the movie Northfork. I found this field when I was driving a backroad between Pompey's Pillar and the Battle of Little Bighorn Monument.

I wish I could have captured the fields swaying in the wind. It looked like waves on an ocean. This enormous, empty field is full of so much promise. Anything can happen there. That's one of the things I really like about the West. No matter how messed up things get I always feel like there's a fresh start waiting just in case I need it.