…for 2008—unless something compelling pops up between now and midnight.

This messy, sunset sky is from Monday, when BART (running 5 minutes late) and Amtrak (running 2 minutes early) conspired to keep me at the Richmond station for an extra 45 minutes. I guess the mass transit gods wanted me to see this sky over the BART station parking lot. Frankly, I would have rather just gone home.

Oh, and Happy New Year’s Eve!

…is a good thing. But, laundromats can feel like marginal places.

(From a depopulated laundromat on a post-Christmas day.)

…of the Downtown Berkeley BART station, Christmas Eve morning.

Slow day today. Got in to work, had coffee, checked email, had lunch, headed home.

Happy Christmas Eve Day!

…& Space (& Star Trek) Museum.

Miss T and I routinely visit Southern California (we have family there, after all) and are well acquainted with the weather, and the beaches, and the Mexican food. One thing that we don’t associate with SoCal, though, is Star Trek. Being set primarily in space, I can’t think of any earthly locale that actually corresponds to Star Trek. Hollywood, maybe, but definitely not San Diego.

Two weeks ago Miss T and I stopped by the San Diego Air & Space Museum to take a gander at Star Trek The Exhibition. As it says on the official site, “…the exhibition features the world’s largest collection of authentic Star Trek ships, sets, costumes and props from all 5 TV series and 10 films over the last 40 years.”

There were ships, and sets, and costumes, and props. And, they were fun to look at. But, without the veneer of special effects, actors, and the TV/movie screen, Star Trek The Exhibition was a cold splash of television and movie magic reality. Up close, props are not equipment, and costumes are not uniforms.

Thankfully, you can remain safely insulated from the funky stitching on the original series’ costumes and the coarse details on the scratchbuilt movie props by viewing photos from the exhibition at maxpixpix on Picasa. The batch starts with: USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-A).

After exiting the Star Trek exhibition back into the rest of the museum, Miss T and I strolled through the entire span of manned flight—a precursor to our future Star Trek history.

I just hope that in the future the props are a little better.

…on a low-70s winter day.

I like the beach. Even better, I like it when there’s no one there. If you don’t mind near-total darkness, the hours between 2:30 and 5:30 a.m. are good candidates for having the beach to yourself. If you like sunlight with your surf and sand, however, pre-dawn is not such an ideal time.

I was pleasantly surprised, then, when Miss T and I hit the beach at Coronado last week. The sun was shining, the weather was a mild 71°, and there was hardly anyone there. Clearly, only birds, clam diggers, and the hardiest of individuals (including ourselves) are able to brave the extremes of a mild, San Diego winter.

Photographic evidence of the near-desertedness of Coronado Beach (which is on the landing approach to U.S. Naval Air Station North Island) are in the not-yet-complete San Diego photos pile on Picasa. Photos start here: Coronado Beach winter day.

It’s not that cold, people!

…in SoCal.

Miss T and I were down in San Diego County last week. It’s raining there now, but my memories of the trip are all blue skies and sunshine. That could just be my medication though.

I’m still sorting through the photos on this one. No San Diego Zoo or SeaWorld pix—sorry, animal lovers.

…rolled.

Just playing around with the macro setting on the camera.

Roly-poly a.k.a. pill bug, potato bug. Officially Armadillidiidae.

…fog wins (the morning).

It’s been foggy in the Central Valley—the entire Central Valley—the last few days. Yesterday, the mist didn’t lift at all.

Fog in our neck of the woods, tule fog, isn’t like San Francisco’s—it doesn’t race along the street at 30 m.p.h. momentarily obscuring and revealing jaywalkers as you whip around corners and up and down hills. No, Central Valley fog just sits there, gradually diminishing visibility to zero in all directions. It’s usually not so thick that it’s a problem in town, but at freeway speeds it can be lethal. On Friday, when I snapped these pix, visibility was about 1000 feet. Just a quiet, misty, moisty morning.

Here’s hoping the fog burns off today.

…Christmas Fair.

It’s become a Max Pictures winter holiday tradition to visit The Great Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco. So, this year, like so many years before, Miss T and I met up with Programmer Girl (our friend and Dickens Fair denizen) at the Cow Palace for a day of Dickensian fun.

From the day after Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve, the Fair takes over the exhibition halls at the Cow Palace. Victorianesque storefronts, restaurants, pubs, and public meeting places are erected along Dickens-named streets, and players in Victorian dress populate the entirely-enclosed “town.”

The Fair isn’t historically-accurate (read: serious) like Colonial Williamsburg, or experience-enforced (read: branded) like Disneyland. Dickens is more along the lines of a costume party or a high school play. The cast and visitors who dress up seem to have a lot of fun.

If you’ve never been to Dickens Fair, you can see 20 DIckens Fair photos from this past weekend at maxpixpix on Picasa. You can also see Programmer Girl’s pix on Flickr.

As they say in Victorian England, “Happy Christmas!”

…early evening.

It’s pitch black here in the Central Valley now (almost no moon), but the sun was just setting as Miss T and I were on our way out of San Francisco earlier this evening.

The Bay Bridge isn’t nearly as famous as its counterpart, the Golden Gate, but it still looks pretty cool at night. That’s my opinion, at least.

(We usually take the Golden Gate heading home, though—usually less traffic.)

…chicken.

Happy Thanksgiving!

…ramento (for you non-Central Valley types).

I’ve lived around Sacramento for at least ten years and visited Old Sacramento maybe three or four times. There’s probably a lot of history there, but all I’ve ever noticed are bars, restaurants, and candy shops—an inordinately high number of candy shops.

Undaunted by the threat of history and old-timey candy, at the end of October Miss T and I decided to take a stroll around Old Sac. I didn’t learn anything (we only had an hour on the parking meter), but I did take 15 Old Sacramento photos which you can see by clicking on the link (the one you just passed—it says 15 Old Sacramento photos… no the first one is the link… okay, no, wait, I’ll link it both times.)

Anyway, that’s Old Sac. (Maybe we’ll come back during Gold Rush Days.)

…nothing special.

Standard start yesterday. A little slow off the blocks. Caught the sunrise over the slough. Got my cafe car special: BART ticket, breakfast croissant, and coffee. (It’s not really a special, but the BART ticket is discounted.)

After the recent quesadilla debacle and my previous unhappiness with the new breakfast burrito, the egg and bacon croissant sandwich is my default morning consumable (for those mornings where consumables are involved).

It’s the lesser of three evils, I guess.

…of people. (Well, very few with people, actually.)

One of my coworkers recently complained about photos of scenery in general and my photos of scenery in particular. “I’m so tired of seeing photo after photo of still lifes. What are you? Antisocial?”* asked WhittGirl.

As anyone who has seen me running from a crowd can attest, I’m not antisocial, just antipeople… in my photos. And, unless I’m shooting an interview, in my movies.

Miss T and I were in Seattle earlier this month and we took many photos of people. None of them are posted here or on Picasa Web, Flickr, Facebook, or elsewhere. However, some of the many, many, many depopulated photos I shot are online at 100 Seattle Weekend photos. The album depicts our brief trip to the Puget Sound: a departure from Sacramento’s aging airport facilities, an obligatory ferry ride, a night out on Ballard Ave., a farmers market (again on Ballard Ave.) the next day, Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, and the slick mall-like newness of SeaTac’s central terminal.

The pix aren’t entirely devoid of people, but you can tell I tried.

*Not a verbatim quote.

…worse than than old breakfast.

I was introduced this morning to a frightening new train-based mobile breakfast technology: the Breakfast Bacon and Egg Quesadilla. Deceptively simple in its appearance and microwave-delivery, the quesadilla belied its complex factory-preparation and lab-based ingredients.

And, it tasted terrible.

Actually, it wasn’t how the quesadilla tasted, it was the texture. Part of the problem may have been that I spent five minutes photographing the thing before I dug into it—the quesadilla rapidly cooled, the cheese started to harden, and the tortilla became chewy and tough. More of the problem was that the egg in the quesadilla may have come from dehydrated chickens—I’ve never had scrambled eggs anywhere as mealy.

This, however, did not stop me from consuming the whole thing.

Once upon a time they had a small breakfast burrito on the train that was inexpensive and pretty good. It was replaced months ago with a larger, pricier, less-palatable burrito. Now, that burrito has been replaced with joined by this crime against quesadillas. (I recently noticed that they still have the new breakfast burrito.)

I suppose for now we’ll just stick with the croissant.