Jeannie's mom retired the Sunday before last. She's worked for the school district for I'd guess two or three decades, which is a commendable effort. I like to think that there'd be a place I could work at for the rest of my life. Since I ain't married, it'd be nice to have some sort of stability somewhere in your life.

Jeannie had pretty much organized and contacted family, friends, and old acquaintances from over the years for the party. We got there early for the surprise while Neal stalled Jeannie's mom at a Walmart as everyone gradually arrived at the restaurant.

And the surprise worked.

A couple that she worked for/helped out when she first arrived in the US.

I rather like this picture- everyone looks so happy.

Jeannie and her best friend from childhood Thuy.

Jeannie and Kiet

Jeannie with Minh and Bao.

Jeannie and her mom.

Bao's mom, Jeannie's mom, Jeannie and Bao. Moms and their kids.

It was a nice meal with nice people. My parents have yet to retire- I don't think they want to. I can't wait to retire so I can sit around and learn and explore all day, but apparently I have another 35 years or so to go.

Tu has been wanting to introduce Pepper and Uno to the beach for the longest time. Last week, we woke up at 5 AM and he drove on out to Galveston. I didn't know how Uno would like the ocean as he's not quite fond of the water, but he ended up liking it immensely.

At sunrise on the Galveston sea wall.

Preparing to unleash the hounds.

Dashing about like kids on Christmas.

The long piers had been destroyed by Hurricane Ike, but the rocky outcroppings remains.

Galveston water is gross. Uno first tried to bite the waves, then he would just occasionally lap it up. Gross.

Pepper looking like she's walking on her hind legs. I called her Pee-Rex.

Uno with a sand mustache.

We were there for maybe an hour, maybe less. It was gross and humid that sunrise, but it was still a pretty good time.

Aside from lighting, posing is one of the toughest parts about photography for me to learn. Some people's talent may be to be able to take good photos without any effort. I think my talent is not photography, but the obsessiveness to try to become good at whatever I focus my efforts on. I know I'm not good at posing people, so I took an enormous stack of fashion magazines that Tramanh was going to throw away and gutted them.

I ripped the covers off. I looked for interesting poses that I could reference in the future for a shoot. It's amazing how much (or little) variation- sans props- there is for posing someone. Hand in pocket. Both hands in pocket. Hands on hip. The slight crossing of the leg. It's the same posturing after a handful of magazine shoots. Then people work in the props. Guys are much more difficult to pose, I have noticed. Much like their clothing selection, the places they can put their hands is very limited. They use a lot more props.

It took a while, but now I have a small stack of pages of models that I can reference before a shoot to remind myself of some ways to pose my subjects. It takes a while and no one sees the outcome of my work from doing this, but it's always the detail in the little things that make the difference in what you do.

Went to my aunt and uncle's house the other week for lunch. As the meal was winding down, we heard an ice cream truck outside and we all decided- me being nearly thirty and the youngest cousin of the group- to bolt out the house and get some ice cream. It turned out to be an ice cream car, but ice cream from any mode of transportation is ice cream nonetheless.

I went with the ninja turtle. My cousin Tinou said that it was weird that Sofia went with the Batman because there were a buncha other characters she knew like Dora, but went with Batman. Vincent suspects it's because I went as the Batman for the marathon.

Heck yeah, here's me and the 'Fia.

This is what my desktop looks like. 4th shelf are all the photos I need to go through.

Larger.

Hmm, thought this was an interesting article. Applicable to both sexes.

Or, if you're in the field, "SarbOx" (or even just "SOx") for short. Each strand of spaghetti is accounted for.

I saw this and knew I had to try it myself.

Just because you're eatin' weiners all night doesn't mean it has to be bad for you. I picked up some Oscar Meyer low fat turkey franks.

You gotta slice 'em up really thin or else you've got too much weiner to spaghetti ratio with each bite. Also, making them as such takes FOREVER.

After maybe half an hour prep time, you've got enough for a dinner for two. But don't expect much, because it's pretty much what it sounds like- hot dogs and spaghetti.

Careful not to break them when first putting them in. They look kinda weird sitting around in there.

So here's what a finished one looks like by itself. Tu said it looks like those robot things from the Matrix- he's right.

But the beauty of it all is that yes, each strand of spaghetti is accounted for. Each piece of hot dog guarantees the perfect amount of spaghetti to meat ratio and there are no loose/small strands leftover in your plate when you're finished.

Here's what the whole mass o' them look like.

From this angle, the hot dog portion kinda looks like those playdoh shape makers pumping out spaghetti shapes.

Of course, once you add the tomato sauce, it all looks like regular ol' spaghetti. But like I said, at the end of the day, you're just eatin' hot dogs and spaghetti with some sauce on top. But once you've finished, you've got one heckuva clean plate.

So about 2 months ago my trusty Nokia 6610 broke. I was about to say "died", but it was an unnatural death, not one of those that comes with age like a fading screen or unresponsive keys. So it broke.

Fall of 2002, I had just graduated college that spring and I finally bought my first cell phone plan (yes, I'm a late bloomer with everything in life, and sometimes not a bloomer at all). This came along shortly after and has been with me ever since.

In an age where there's absolutely no loyalty in electronics, where people wait for "the next big thing" and iphones and blackberrys last maybe a year before they break/get lost/stolen, my phone has endured seasons and seasons of the newest "technological breakthroughs".

I could drop it on the ground, it would be okay. I dropped it even while running during the Houston half marathon and it was okay. It wasn't until recently that I decided to buy a replacement battery for it. And then, in March, a freak accident happened and its achilles heel- a crack on the case over the screen- was compromised and the liquid crystal display was shattered.

You see, that phone was unique. Any time I pulled it out, someone had a smart remark about it. But try what they wanted, they couldn't deny that it was different. No one bats an eye when someone pulls out a blackberry or iphone, but people noticed when I brought my phone out. All those other phones were boring.

I've had friends even go so much as to hate my phone. For reasons I could not figure out. Newer was not better. See, with this phone, I could do what no one else could- I could text without looking. I could be chatting with someone and under the table, I could be shooting out texts without even looking at the screen and maintaining a polite social situation. See, we live in an age with smart phones, phones that connect to the internet. When we hang out in groups, people sit on their cell phones texting other people, checking their facebook, checking the game- doing anything but be with the person they're there with. I try my best to avoid that, just out of common courtesy.

So, you see, I'm staunchly a luddite in this respect. People hated my phone because it was old. It didn't have a camera. It couldn't connect to the internet. But my phone could go for days without charging. And I didn't need all those other useless features. If you think newer is better, try convincing me that 21 scene modes is even necessary on a camera- that dial becomes cluttered and useless and you spend more time wading through menus than taking photos.

And most importantly was the sentimental value of that phone. It had stored on it (and couldn't store on my sim card) beginning with a stupidly funny birthday text from the LilBro back from 2005 and a handful of other texts from people that I have lost touch with but whose texts were saved for a random laugh now and again. I lost all that, and that's something no new phone could ever replace.

I have a replacement phone now. It's a rebound phone, to be sure, and I hate it. I have to charge it at least every other day. Someone suggested I try finding another Nokia 6610, but honestly, that'd be like if your wife died and you decided to marry her twin sister. You do not marry the sister.

There's a camera on this rebound phone. I used it one time, to remember to show it to the Lilbro later, but I still have not. It's a Nokia, so the texting is the same, but some idiot at Nokia decided to add an extra step before sending off the text. You may not think that's a big deal, but it's annoying when you're sending hundreds of texts a month and now I actually have to look down at the keypad to make sure I'm not sending it to the wrong person. When you get an MBA and sit through all these classes regarding operations efficiency, this would be a step in the wrong direction.

In any case, this was just a eulogy on why new is not necessarily better and why you can never put a price on sentimental value.

David asked if I could shoot some photos for his fiance's cousin Hang's graduation announcements. Lee had also graduated earlier, but never got photos in her cap and gown so it was an all-in-one shoot.

Tu and Tramanh asked me to shoot their save the dates. They gave me a general idea of what they wanted and I spotted this large open field to set up shop. We shot around sunset, but the light didn't want to work with me that day and it was ridiculously windy which made it hard to shoot without Tramanh's hair flying this way and that. I liked a small handful of the photos, which I suppose is good because you only need one or two good ones anyway.

Assembling the flamingos. I kept calling them penguins during the shoot for some reason.

Me, being utterly useless.

Just two stools sitting out in an open field, you know.

When they first got the flamingos, I kept shooting them like guns around the house. Then I told them to shoot them after the shoot was over. I don't know why Tu insisted on holding it backwards, but maybe that's why he is the one getting shot.

My fave pic from the shoot.