Yesterday I went to a concert of ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro.  I had heard of him before, as he had been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, one of the best shows running.

Honestly, I just went there to take his photo.  I love music and I knew he was good, but when I heard him play, I realized he is fantastic.  And then he won my heart by playing my favorite song, Bohemian Rhapsody on the ukulele.  A revelation.  A song that usually needs an orchestra played on a tiny, usually not rich sounding instrument and it came out sounding the way it did???  Magnificent.

Jake Shimabukuro, you have a new fan.  And you also make for a good photography subject:

I had to photograph.  Otherwise, I don’t know, the sky would cave in on us:

Shiba Inus are just cool.  Who can’t love a dog that doesn’t bark, instead choosing to ring a bell to indicate that they need something.

No doubt.  Shibas rule!:

A couple of months back, my trusty Canon D10 conked out.  I mean it had been through quite a lot in its short life.  It had been slammed again the side of a kayak, taken on multiple ski trips (30 in total) and also taken underwater.

To replace it, I bought an Olympus Tough Camera.  I thought nothing of it at the time.  I thought “well, a secondary camera for incidental shots and everyday use.”  Then I discovered the miniaturization effect.  It is supposed to mimic tilt shift.  For those not in the know, the tilt shift lens is one that makes everything look weirdly miniature.  It is super cool, but one tilt shift lens costs more than my monthly salary.  So it was going to remain a dream…

Well, Olympus made my life easy.  So I’ve been going around all summer miniaturizing everything.  See:

Last night I attended a very lovely performance of the Shakespeare play “Two Gentlemen of Verona.”  It wasn’t the first time I attended an outdoor theater performance and the last one I attended was also Shakespeare.

The other one I attended was purely performance related and quite nice.  This one was much funnier.  On the stage were really good actors speaking the exact words of Shakespeare, but they were dressed up in 1950s (or 1960s) outfits.  It all looked a bit Mad Men to me.

And the aforementioned dog.  Well, I went with my friends who have a dog.  The whole thing made the dog quite uneasy.  He spent the entire night shifting around and trying to find a new position.  One he just sat down on my friend.  Another time he sat down on me.  Every clap caused a change of position and every dog within a 200 foot radius caused another change of position.  It was pretty funny.  We kept trying to pet him to calm him down, but he just really didn’t care.

The photos:

Well, I was really far away from the stage, so they got creative.  The ones where the participants are really blown out are the ones I took from far away.  I was kind of going for an artistic/poster art feeling with those.  For some of the others, the positions the people struck were just perfect, so I shot away as soon as I could.

Enjoy:

For we shall soon be covered in ice and snow and be chilled to the bone:

This summer I have a new job.  Yes, in addition to my current job as provider of knowledge to impressionable young people, I have become Executive jelly fish herder.  What do you have to do to get such a prestigious position?  Well, you learn and you learn and you learn.  No, I’m totally kidding.  Herding jelly fish is actually more difficult than herding cats.  Cats respond to some form of external stimuli.  Jelly fish do not.

My mother refers to my job as “Shady Pines Activities Director.”  For those of you who are fans of the magnificent 1980s sitcom Golden Girls, you will get the joke.

Anyway, I had to herd the jelly fish to Charles River.  Then went in myself.  On a kayak.  Joyously:

I thought I wasn’t going to get any good photos today.  But the cat evidently disagreed with me, agreeing to pose for the following few: