I went to the L.A. Pride Parade in West Hollywood today and took a bajillion pictures, which it’ll probably take me a solid couple days to upload. I’ll be putting up a slideshow when I’m done. In the meantime, please enjoy this preview of things to come:

I got tossed a research project, which is very good for the pocketbook but not so good for having time to do much else. So instead, it’s time for a little shameless bragging in photographic form.

Left: January 27, 2007, about three weeks before I finally snapped and decided to do something about my weight.

Right: April 29, 2009.

Ladies and gentlemen: The power of “eat less, exercise more.”

Special thanks must go out to Laz and his lovely wife Christin for haranguing me into getting the fuck out of Los Angeles for a couple of days, and letting me crash on the couch in their room at the Encore so my broke ass wouldn’t have to shell out for a hotel room.

I really had a good time, though I’ll admit my legs are a bit sore still from all the walking. We walked from Encore down to New York New York and the MGM Grand, which looks like a 2 mile walk on Google Maps, but GMaps doesn’t account for all the detours you take into and around casinos. Next time I go to Vegas, I’m going to bring a pedometer so I can figure out exactly how far I walk.

I also need to be a bit more careful about how much food I shove down my gullet at a buffet. We went to the excellent Spice Market buffet at Planet Hollywood, and I stuffed my face to such a ridiculous extent that my appetite is still off more than 30 hours later. That’s probably a sign I shouldn’t have eaten that much.

Once again, thanks to Laz and Christin, who had to put up with me doing this for a couple days. The results of all my photography are below in slideshow form or at my flickr.

While getting some other photos off my camera, I found a few I’d forgotten that I’d taken, including this extreme closeup of Chaplin’s paw that I thought turned out pretty well:

I was so amused to find all his paws sticking out from under the blanket while he was napping.

I went to take the trash out when I came back from my swim at the gym today, and as I walked past my apartment complex’s pool, I was a little surprised to see a pair of ducks swimming around:

I’ve seen seagulls in there before, which didn’t seem that unusual since I’m only about two miles from the ocean, but the ducks just struck me as odd, so I went and snapped off a few pictures. The fact that one of the neighborhood cats was watching them float around made it even funnier.

Today, February 25th, 2009, I got glasses for the first time in my life.

I outlasted my dad (who got glasses when he was somewhere around 5 or so) by about 22 years. I was outlasted by my mother (who got glasses when she was 35) by 7 years.

Also: I am now officially a nerd.

Chaplin and his hilariously sad cone/satellite dish collar, critiquing my queue of BSG episodes.

This time, they actually let me spring him as promised. I don’t know who’s happier, me or him.

He’s doing fairly okay – I have to keep a close eye on him to make sure he’s not trying to lick his stitches or chew off his fentanyl patch (being held on by the blue bandage on his foot), but for the most part he just wants to sit, be stoned, and snuggle.

He does find time to hate his new haircut, which took odd looking patches off of all four of his legs, plus all his belly fur. He looks like some demented person tried to shave him like a poodle and was stopped just before they got to his tail.

But really, he’s being super sweet and cuddly, and really happy to be out of the hospital. Unless, of course, I try to medicate him. This was him after my first round of chasing him down to dope him up:

Anyway, very, very happy to finally have him home and have him apparently be on the mend. Couple more pictures over at my Flickr.

Edited to add: Oh, and his collar’s off because I’m here keeping a close eye on him. He still has to wear the satellite dish when I’m asleep or at work for the next couple weeks, but at least as long as I can keep watch on him he’s free of that misery.

A few of my better photos from my ridiculously good seats watching the poor old Cubbies lose to the Dodgers a week ago:

Thanks to my friend Matty Lew, who generously subsidized my ticket, and blatantly lied to me about the extent to which he was doing so because he knew I would have been way too proud to accept said subsidy otherwise.

So Flickr has a feature wherein you can compare the statistics of all your pictures, and see which ones are the most popular, see where your hits are coming from, and things of that nature. It’s pretty interesting and a fantastic way to kill time if you’re really bored.

I have one photo that is far and away the most popular one (almost 2500 views vs. the 2nd place photo’s 1900, and 10th place’s 390). Is it well-composed? Is it of something particularly unusual? Or is it this:

That’s right, a picture I took of a grow room in the Amsterdam Hemp and Marijuana Museum is the most popular picture I’ve ever taken. It’s managed to make its way onto the first page of search results for both “hemp” and “marijuana” on Flickr, so I suppose that helps.

I’m inordinately amused by how very, very many people seem to enjoy this picture, despite how utterly craptacular it is. Piss-poorly framed, shot with a terrible resolution camera, and really kind of indistinct. But it’s weed, man, so it’s popular.

Clearly, I should start aiming more of my efforts in everything artistic at the stoner crowd, because they’re easy to please.