Janette and I did a wonderful maternity shoot a few days ago in the park.  She’s a model who’s had a tough pregnancy and wanted some images that were a little different from the usual maternity shots to help celebrate her femininity.  The weather co-operated by giving us a break from the November rain and we had some beautiful light to work with.  We had a lot of fun together and I hope to meet up again once the little bundle of joy arrives!

I was texting Christa a few days ago on my trusty Motorola KRZR phone at the airport.  For those who don't know, it has a proprietary predictive text mode similar to T9, where all you have to do is start typing the first few letters of the word and it'll suggest a complete word that you can then press the Up arrow key to accept.  It can save time; however, as I was typing out the first few letters of airplane (2, 4, 7, 7), the darn phone helpfully jumped in and suggested airship.  WTF?  This isn't 1937!  Only if I type in the "l" will it then suggest airplane.  My programmer mind doesn't see why this should happen!

I don't think I've ever typed the word airship in my life, until now (twice and counting).  What's the probability someone would actually want to type "Hey just abt to board the airship. Cn u pick me up pls?" 

I mean, really, someone needs to revise the built-in dictionary to add in a the few common words that don't pop up like responsiveness, mustang, waif, and aperitif (which results in the very King Kong-esque apeshuge) and take out the less-common ones that do come up such as Jagath, Noelia, Roxana and Isling (which, amazingly enough, DOES mean "to make an island of something").  There is no penne or macaroni, but there is spaghetti.  Stoichiometry comes up with the amusing Runicgimmetry.  Amusing how?  Gimmetry doesn't exist, so far as I know, but it sounds cool, so I think I'll officially make it so and provide an example: "The kids' gimmetry was getting on my nerves as they were both fighting over one toy and screaming, 'Gimme!  Gimme!'"

Anyway, I suppose if you need to tell Noelia that you're going to swing by to pick her up in your airship to go create some islands and she'd better bring a shovel, well, hey, you've saved yourself some typing.  And no snobby aperitifs after you're done, just "go out for drinks".

On my way to Cliff Mautner's excellent photography workshop outside Philadelphia, I took the chance to visit The City -- New York City (what else?) for those that live outside NYC -- for a few hours.  The whirlwind tour started just outside Camden, NJ, onto the River Line train to Trenton, then onto the NJTransit express train to The City, through Secaucus, New Brunswick, Newark, and finally ending at Penn Station.  Two and half hours and $13 after I left, I was in The City!  All this on less then 4 hours of sleep. 

Going up the Empire State Building consumed about two hours passing through security, the endless snaking lineups, photo booth, and tourist shop, though the view was certainly breathtaking.  Afterwards, I continued on 34th through Macy's, then hopped the subway up to 57th and Central Park, over to the Trump Hotel and Tower, back down on Broadway, through Times Square, over to Grand Central Station (by a fortuitous subway mistake), down to visit the Ground Zero and Battery Park, then back to Penn station.  The NJ countryside and small towns were charming and beautiful with the turning leaves still on trees.  The City is amazingly clean and so full of people energy, a contrast to its grubby, mugger-infested reputation that seems very antiquated.

Food grabbed on the run: a bagel, hotdog, a pizza, and a pretzel -- my own NYC combo!

The Creative Company Name Award goes to "Mr. Driving School", sighted somewhere outside Newark.

The ESB

View from atop the ESB

Central Park

Times Square (picture courtesty of some passing photography students)

Battery Park (a little sparsely populated oasis of calm -- just a handful of people there)