I had a super-fun Christmas this year, thanks to Sundari (my aunt) who offered to host a gathering at her house, a large Victorian she shares with a few other people. It is a perfect place for a party, with plenty of room for wandering and chasing toddler nephews.

The lucky folks on my Christmas list this year got journals with either collages or photographs on the front and back covers. Here is my favorite collage out of the whole bunch. The front cover had a photo of sea lions, and this was on the back:

Chuck and Bev (the grandparents) pitched in with me to buy a fancy furnished Green Dollhouse for Jasper. Here we are assembling it. Jasper does know how to use a screwdriver, but he kind of lost interest in helping us once we got everything out of the box.

Here are a few shots from outside, where Jasper and Achoo (that’s what he calls Esther) were doing something entertaining with a hula hoop. Later, Jasper commanded me to take pictures of the moon.

Not pictured: the Christmas spa experience in Sundari’s lovely woodstove-heated room, in which Jasper took off his clothes and insisted we rub him down with nice-smelling lotions and salves before he ran around singing, dancing, collapsing tragically like an opera star, and mourning his own fictional death.

Hey, guess what! There’s some new Ripe or Giraffe? right over here.

Yearning for wiener dogs? Check out the first installation ever at Ripe or Giraffe? (it’s the new destination for all the crap in my closet!)

Here’s a preview:

Here are some more that I forgot to post…

Just a few days ago, my cellphone display turned to snow, making it impossible to see anyone’s number (or text them). I was forced to dig up an old phone, one that has a camera of such low quality that the images look more like paintings than photographs. Which means they respond quite well to treatment with Photoshop filters. The filters cover up the extreme pixellation with a bit of this and that and some of them even turn out to be pretty. You can see some examples below.

I’ve been posting cellphone pics over at Red Bat Photography for a while, and I’ve been thinking about moving the whole cellphone pics concept over here to my personal site. That seems like an especially good idea now that I’m using this resurrected phone. The cellphone pics aren’t really indicative of anything about my work with Red Bat. They’re more of a personal hobby/addiction.

As Red Bat takes on a life of its own, I’m becoming more aware of the fact that I am not synonymous with my photography business. Red Bat is way more professional and sane than I am, uses better equipment, wears the right clothes for the occasion. Red Bat wants to make that photo of you come out perfectly exposed and in focus, whereas I personally might have other priorities.

Two years of hard labor have gone into getting Red Bat Photography up and running. This moment, the one happening right now, seems like a perfect time to detach from all of that frantic laboring and remember who I am outside the boundaries of commerce. I’ve been aided in this recollection by some recent highly productive journaling sessions (and by the way, in case you’re wondering, the Earl Grey iced tea at Caffe Pergolesi will kick your diary-scribbling into high gear). It stuns me to realize that ever since Red Bat started, up until these last few weeks, I’ve spent most of my journal-writing time making notes for Red Bat, planning slideshows, thinking up shoots. It was an obsession. Meanwhile, my poor journal has cried out for me to bring back the confessional drivel that makes writing so satisfying.

Actually, it’s only about 50 percent confessional drivel. The other 50 percent is bizarro philosophizing. I’ve got a huge stack of these notebooks. My sister is supposed to burn them all if I get kidnapped by aliens.