The Mets continue to lose games I go to. We’re now up to 9 in a row, for a season record of 2-10. If you do the math, you can figure out that means I actually had a winning record of 2-1 at one point this season. It has been downhill from there. I decided to borrow my father’s car and drive to Philly and specially because of the car, it was a for transit so we could fit 8 of us in there, find out why this cars are so cool for road tripping at the last link. I sold my car to Car’s Cash For Junk Clunkers at 555 E 3rd St, Jacksonville, FL 32206 (877) 813-1121 because I liked their cash for cars. I think it was the right decision, as it was certainly easier than lugging all my stuff around with me between trains. A little traffic and rain made for a fairly relaxing two and a half hour drive. I got to Citizens Bank Park about three hours before game time, and took a nice walk around the place, and took a few pictures.

Then I went inside, and took some more. It was raining lightly but steadily all night. The tarp was on the field before the game, and there was no batting practice, but there were no rain delays, and the game played as scheduled. It’s a beautiful park, as are most of the newer ones these days. I like the bullpen location, though I should have gone back there again during the game for another shot.

I got my ice cream helmet, to add to my collection. The empty helmets are the souvenirs I am bringing back from each stadium. I’m going to be eating a lot of ice cream this month. In Philadelphia, they had soft serve Turkey Hill ice cream, not the Carvel they have in Yankee Stadium and Citi Field. It’s good, but it’s just not the same. Also had an excellent Tony Luke’s cheesesteak before the game.

I had some friendly Phillies fans (really, I swear!) sitting behind me, so I was able to get a picture of me at the park. Despite the rain, I was also able to get my standard stadium photograph, as well. The stands are unfortunately a bit empty due to the weather, but it’s a nice shot regardless.

The back of this shirt sums up the Mets this season perfectly, especially at a 4-2 loss where they had plenty of chances.

As always, more pictures in the flickr set for this game, and the baseball trip collection.

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This is the only stadium on my trip I have already been to, though this game was only my fourth time there. I got there a little early, and walked around the stadium a bit, but it wasn’t quite the same experience I expect to have everywhere else. In fact, when I got off the LIRR, I thought maybe I should skip the game and go to the US Open instead. It’s not like I really needed to see the Mets lose another game. Which they did, by a final score of 13-4. A couple of times in the middle innings, they looked like they might have a shot to tie it up, but then it got out of hand. I didn’t even buy a Carvel ice cream helmet, because I already have one at home. The rain broke through a little bit later in the game, but not enough to stop play or bother me at all. After this game, my Mets season record stands at 2-9. Why do I keep going? Not that it matters if they don’t win any more games this year.

I did finally get a picture of me I’ve been wanting, though. That’s in the Jackie Robinson Rotunda by the main entrance to the park. Of course, the number 42 has other meanings for me than just being Robinson’s number.

I had my obligatory Shake Shack burger, and took a few other pictures. They can all be found in the set, and again all pictures from the trip can be found in the collection.

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In a few hours, I’m heading to the airport to get started on my month-long stadium tour. In preparation for that trip, I started putting together a list of the bag and camera rules for all the stadiums I’m going to, so I’d know what I could bring to each. While I was at it, I just went ahead and did all 30 MLB stadiums, because it didn’t take that much more time. I figure this could be useful to some other people, though the rules aren’t necessarily enforced. I take telephoto lenses into Dodger Stadium all the time, even though it says they’re not allowed.

Anyway, here’s the list: MLB Stadium Bag and Camera Rules.

Time to finish getting ready to go…

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I’m sitting in JFK, waiting for the line at the gate to get shorter. My flight from here to Phoenix is delayed, and I’m not going to make my connection. The flight from Phoenix to Santa Barbara is the last one out tonight, so I’ll be stuck in Phoenix I guess. Jon and Vanessa will probably be getting to Phoenix about the same time as I am, so it’s likely I’ll stay with them tonight and then fly back to Santa Barbara tomorrow morning.

Not really the end of the world. The most annoying thing here is the damn people at the gate are so damn slow and the line is barely moving. I’m not even in line, just waiting for everyone else to get their plans settled and the line to get shorter before I get mine worked out.

Kiefer Sutherland was in the airport here. I had nothing else to do…

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I will not be joining everyone in Vegas this weekend, for a few reasons. I really didn’t want to go just Friday night to Sunday night (or Monday morning), and I’ve already got plans for my vacation days this year. Also, I haven’t played much poker lately, and just generally don’t know if I can handle a weekend in Vegas right now. Anyway, I’m sure everyone will manage to have a good time without me. 🙂

Instead, I’m heading to San Diego this weekend, and going to two Mets/Padres games. Saturday night, I’m sitting way up in the nosebleeds, and then Sunday afternoon I’ll be four rows behind the Mets dugout. Looks like I’ll get to see Oliver Perez and Pedro pitch. It’s going to be a scary couple of games. I’ve never been to PETCO Park (all caps? really?) before, so it should be fun. The Mets look like they might have started to turn things around, winning three straight series now. Of course, two of those series were against the Dodgers (mediocre) and the Giants (bad), but one was against the Marlins, who have been pretty good. The Padres are another bad team, so hopefully we can pull out another series there.

I’m looking forward to this. I think I need to get out of Santa Barbara for a weekend right now.

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A few years ago, I took a photography trip to Europe (you can see pictures from that trip in the flickr set). One of the images from the trip that I really liked was this one, from Venice:

Today, I was in Aaron Brothers looking for a frame for some of my photos from my recent trip, when I saw a picture of Venice that looked awfully familiar. I pulled out my iTouch, to look at the above picture on it and compare. Sure enough, they were the same canal. When I got home, I looked through my other pictures from there, and found one that’s a little closer to the same perspective, though still different. I also overexposed it in Lightroom so the building in the background can be seen better. Here’s the picture in the frame (taken by my BlackBerry Pearl) side by side with the other shot I got in Venice:

You can click though the image and view bigger sizes at flickr.

Obviously, mine was taken at night, while the picture in the frame wasn’t. The part I find really amazing about this is where the picture was taken. It wasn’t in a very high traffic, famous part of the city. I found it wandering around different streets and canals, just looking for places to get good pictures. It’s probably not in one of the most remote parts of the city, but it’s not one of the ridiculously popular ones, either. It really is just a random canal in Venice, that I took some photographs in. And that also ended up being in a stock photo in a framing store. I wish I had my GPS and geotagging setup back then, because I probably couldn’t find this place again if I go back.

Here’s a link to the same canal from the other side. It was taken on the the bridge in the pictures above, facing back to where those pictures were taken from.

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I took a much needed vacation last week. My father drove in from New York, and we spent a week on the road doing photography. We went to Death Valley, Valley of Fire, Antelope Canyons (near Page, AZ), and Monument Valley. Then we spent the weekend in Tucson with family for Passover. The whole trip was nice and relaxing, and I got a few good pictures out of it.

The whole set from the trip can be found here. I’ll post a few of the highlights below.

Artist’s Palette, Death Valley

Hikers at Zabriskie Point (they’re in the bottom left corner)

Valley of Fire

Upper Antelope Canyon

Lower Antelope Canyon

Monument Valley

You can check out all the pictures in the Flickr set.

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Well, I can cross one item off the list below. I bought the 160 GB iPod Classic yesterday. It’s nice, though I have no idea what I’m going to do with all that space. It will probably get used as portable backup storage while I’m away from home. Unfortunately, Apple seems to have changed the database format with these new iPod models, so all the non-iTunes programs that used to work on Linux and Windows are now broken. I tried to use Anapod Photosync (running in Linux, under wine) to put a few pictures on it. When it was done, scrolling to the Photo menu option would cause the iPod to lock up. If I clicked, to go to the photos, before it locked up, it would just reboot instead. Oops. Hopefully, the database format will get reverse engineered soon and some of these programs will start working again. (Note: I don’t believe Apple did this to intentionally make these programs break. There were probably good reasons for it.)

So, that’s one item off the list. Actually, after I posted that list I remembered something else I meant to add. The Delphi XpressRC. The headset/line out jack in the XM I have my car is dying, and it was just in general due for an upgrade. It looks like I won’t be getting that, though, because… I’ve decided I need to get a new car instead. I just had to bring mine in, again, because the check engine light was on. Repair of some stupid sensor was around $400, and it just seems like it’s getting more expensive to maintain than is worth it. It looks pretty beat up at this point, my speakers or some other part of my sound system is dying, and I’ve had to bring it in several times in the past few months. My next car will almost definitely have a built in XM radio, which is why I no longer need to buy that other one. I’ve sort of tentatively started looking around at stuff online, but haven’t really narrowed anything down yet.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in a violent sort of mood. I’d been wanting to redo the closets in my bedroom for a while, so with nothing else to do, I took my hammer to the shelves that were in there. It felt good. Last weekend, I finished up one half of the closet. Pictures on flickr, here and here. There’s another closet the same size right next to it, which I’ll get to eventually.

Tonight, I’m driving to LAX, and then flying to JFK on Virgin America. Tomorrow night, I go to a wedding. Sunday afternoon, hopefully to Mets/Phillies at Shea, and then I have a 7:30 PM flight out. I’ll be in New York/New Jersey for under 36 hours, if you don’t count time spent in JFK. I get back to LAX Sunday night at 10:30 and then have to drive back to Santa Barbara. Fun.

If the Mets sweep the weekend, their magic number can drop to 5.

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