http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=421547

He’s a great photographer and many of the photos document what I have been up to in 2008.

Once you click the link, you’ll need to look for his blog entries titled “Photo Journal 2008″ (there should be five of them, totaling about 450 photos or so. Please let me know if the link doesn’t work.

Hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think.

Austin is absolutely a great place to call home. It’s filled with beautiful, natural water holes for swimming and hanging out in the summer, and is completely covered in trees. It has the same feel as portland and the like, as it has a river that runs just next to downtown with bridges that run across it. It also has that big neighborhood feel as opposed to big city feel, despite it being quite a large city indeed.

The people are weird and offbeat, there’s a huge music scene, and it is hard to find chain stores/billboards anywhere within the city limits. The neighborhoods are well-rounded as far as blending commercial with domestic, as in, there are plenty of little community bookstores, libraries, and coffee shops within walking distance pretty much no matter which neighborhood you live in.

Three of my best friends, and also my lady friend (liz) have all moved with me into this wonderful 5 bedroom house that is literally about a 5 minute walk to downtown and within biking distance of pretty much everything austin has to offer. We have converted one of the two extra “office” rooms into a band room and have all of our music equipment set up in there. We’ve been playing lots and having a really great time.

Whole Foods headquarters are located in Austin, and there happens to be a large distribution center for Whole Foods about 5 minutes (driving) from our house where we’ve been going dumpster diving and finding all sorts of wonderful treats. There is also an Odwalla distribution center about 10 minutes away (driving) that we’ve found lots and lots of juice and bars at, so we are really happy campers.

I am going to an interview on the 19th for a tutoring job in mathematics and partly in spanish. I guess my main job will be tutoring/teaching math, but the students are also in the process of learning spanish so i have been requested to speak some spanish if possible with them. It’s all very exciting, though i don’t know how confident i am with my verbal spanish skills, especially in front of more than one person!

Here’s a bunch of little chunks (~3 mins each, they should play in order) taken from a 3 hour session recording that my friends Brian, Randy and myself recorded a few nights ago:

We really had a lot of fun just messing around and experimenting, but some that we thought stood out a little bit were “big lips”, “slingshot”, “light as a feather”, and “broken wing”, but you should check them all out if you have the time!

rusty trumpet
cold-is-coming
big lips
big lips (reprise)
slingshot
tin whistle
middle of nowhere
island boys
these days
30th century man
winning streak
big city bound
bebop from the future
building things
molasses
quiet time
fleeing the deep south
light as a feather
coltrane turns in his grave
desert hop
broken wing