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Sunday, July 12, 2009

Chicken on a String.

The Landlord had the week off and while I was pretty busy trying to organize my life, he decided to organize adventures to partake. One such adventure entailed crabbing in Galveston. I vaguely recall crabbing in Galveston in the mid-80's, back before my uncle moved to Sacramento. There are bits and pieces of memories of waking up really early, having a crab trap, and the murky Galveston water. I recall fishing trips with my dad much more vividly from my youth, but I can only remember bits and pieces of that one time I went crabbing.

We didn't really have any idea of how to crab, just that we'd have twine, drumsticks, and a net of some sort. The original plan was to arrive at Galveston at 4 AM and crab during low tide until the sun came up. At the last minute, Tu decided we should have some sort of regular sleep schedule and rather than wake up super early, we ended up arriving at peak high tide around midnight. I thought it would be much harder to catch crabs at high tide, but my knowledge of the subject is about as extensive as my knowledge of quantum physics.

Galveston's water wall at midnight. Our first destination was a pier mostly wiped out by Hurricane Ike. All that was left was an outcrop of rocks cutting out into the rough waters.

Our second destination was a small dock on another part of Galveston that jutted out a few yards from a shore with calmer waters. Portions of another dock stood isolated and ruined several yards away. We ended up setting up shop here.

A single boat sat by itself nearby as well.

A little ways down, another group of optimistic Vietnamese fishermen set up shop.

The first hour was pretty slow. Much waiting and Lone Star and slowly reeling in empty chicken-laden lines, only to cast them back out again. Tu and Vinh ran back and forth across the tiny dock while I propped up my camera on a tripod and snapped away.

I spent much of my time with my camera on the tripod photographing what I could around me.

Vinh finally pulls in our first catch- a one-clawed crab about an hour into our adventure. They're actually out there, somewhere.

I'm surprised the photos turned out as well as they did- you can see here that the only light sources we had were from these lights from the main road.

The two-man team spent much time looking into the water. Luckily, much of crabbing entails being real still so I could get quite a few clear shots.

Poor Tu, he is the hunchback with no Tramanh (that is my favorite overused landlord joke). Because his fiance is Tramanh. Eh? EH?

Anyway.

Here's a view from slippery algae boat ramp. Almost die.

Using Vinh's powerful flashlight to skim the watery depths.

An hour later we were still with merely one crab and decided to try a new location.

We ended up paying $24 to hit up Sea Wolf Park further away more towards the channel in hopes of upping our crab ante past one. We arrived after 2 AM with a lighter wallet and high hopes. Only to be stricken by swarms of mosquitoes.

This photo was taken around 3 AM. Yeah tripod time. Tu manages to reel in a crab of his own.

Vinh and Tu get tired of me snapping photos so I take up a chicken-on-a-string and get crabbing. I catch one some ten minutes later- the largest catch of the night (though that's not saying that much). Crabbing is actually kind of fun, though it's kind of gross to slowly pull your drumstick back up to the surface of the water only to see this gross creature holding onto it.

Unfortunately, the area failed to be any more fruitful than any of the other locations we went to that night and we ended the trip with one crab apiece and left a little after 4 AM. Despite only nabbing three crabs that night, I consider it a success considering I had a handful of great photos come from it.

12:33 PM - 1 view - add eprops - add comments - email it

Closer to Dog.

Ah, dogs, an unfailingly reliable blog subject. I never get tired taking pictures of the same dogs. They don't really feel self conscious about being in front of the camera, and I never have to worry about trying to get the skin tones looking correct. It's good practice and I'm beginning to like how these are turning out.

Pepper does good modeling always

Uno looking particularly more suave than his normal earnest self

Uno being "Umo". So saddings.

This one's my fave out of the set.

And I leave you with a crazy .gif I made of Pepper as she blinked and stared at me.

3:30 AM - 1 view - add eprops - add comments - email it

Counterintuitive.

Strange how you can look at the surface of a counter top and see something like this:

And then you look a bit closer and realize how reflective a surface it actually is:

And when you really concentrate on the reflection and "look through" the counter top, you can make out quite a bit of detail:

I always like when you see something every day for months and find something about it that you never noticed before. Most of my friends dislike blogging because they think they have nothing to say, that their lives are boring. Maybe people let their relationships go stagnant thinking that there's never anything new to be learned about their significant other. Maybe they are never content with the things they buy when the novelty wears off soon after. My coworker once said when he was expecting his first child, he didn't care about whether his kid was exceptionally smart, he just wanted him to be curious about the world. And I agree completely- you should never stop learning and you should never stop trying to look at ordinary things in a new way- even in something as mundane as a reflection in a counter top.

There's always some sort of story to tell out there.

3:06 AM - 6 views - 2 eprops - 2 comments - email it

Saturday, July 11, 2009

	Hello. I am back.
	7:45 PM - 6 views - 4 eprops - 2 comments - email it

Chicken on a String.

Closer to Dog.

Counterintuitive.

Hello.