First Days in Los Angeles This was the first time that I had been to Los Angeles in many years, and entirely the first time that I'd had anyone to show me around. Liz and I went all over the city, spent some time down in Santa Monica during one of her auditions, and plenty of time at the ever famous Dresden bar (the one from Swingers).

Renaissance Faire Liz and I hadn't seen one another in many years, but I picked her up at her dad's house in Katy so that we could attend the Renaissance Faire with the Galbinceas. We spent the entirety of the day at the festival, all the while drinking beers out of shot glasses. Needless to say that by the end of the day, we were pretty drunk. If you've never been to a Renaissance Festival before, I would highly advise going to one; they're very fun.

Swan Wedding After Party After the wedding and reception came to its lovely conclusion, we headed back over to the bar across the street from the hotel for some much needed pool and beer. I think the highlight of my evening was my younger cousin, Michael, trying to pick up one of the giant beer cylinders only to have it tip over all over one of the pool tables. That is definitely the sort of thing that makes for a fun corporate-bar outing!

Pope Wedding and Reception Emerson and Jennie had one of the coolest weddings that I've been to, especially in Austin. They rented one of the larger paddle boats on Town Lake (Ladybird Lake) and were married a little east of the MoPac bridge. The wedding reception was at the downtown Hyatt and managed to get me sufficiently intoxicated. Fortunately I had my trusty designated driver with me.

Baylor vs. Washington As an honorary member of the Baylor Alumni association, I thought it would be fun to see one of the bowl games this year and headed down to San Antonio for the Alamo Bowl. I was expecting Baylor to dominate Washington, but it was actually a fairly close and back and forth game. Of course the Bears wound up winning in the end. The best part was that as soon as we walked into the stadium, some guy handed Kujda and I giant cut outs of two Baylor players. The one I got was the famed Robert Griffin III.

J311K Slides In my second year in college I took a photo journalism class. It was the first time I had been taught how to use a proper SLR camera and I spent the entire semester shooting these slides. Mind you that this was before digital cameras really existed. Although I had actually bought one the year before, it cost me about $900 and was only capable of shooting pictures about as well as early cell phones could. It was one of the earliest digital cameras on the market and was the Ricoh RDC-2. I bought it from a small independent vendor in Austin and it cost me about everything I had at the time from working my first real job while in college! Most all of the pictures in this album were shot on a Minolta SLR.

A Real Life Spicegirl I was just walking the streets of NYC one afternoon, likely on my way home from work, when I stumbled upon this huge line of people waiting to see a girl in pink. Upon closer inspection, it occurred to me that she was one of the Spice Girls (Ginger Spice to be precise) and so I burned through a bunch of pictures of her.

Movie Theater Destruction One night while I was still in high school, me and three of my buddies got into Putt's van, had a few drinks at one of our dad's offices, and then proceeded to go see a movie in Houston. We managed to sneak a ton drinks into the place (somehow or another) and as it happened, we were the only people who occupied the theater. I don't remember remember everything we did, but I do know that we left the theater with two of their EXIT signs.

Fixing my Saturn Ion My Saturn had been giving me all sorts of problems in Los Angeles. The problem was that I didn't have a whole lot of money set aside to fix it, and more importantly I didn't want to be spending money on the car. After a bunch of internet research and greasy hands, I figured out that the radiator cooling fan had gone bad. I ordered another one from the internet and than paid a mechanic just one hour of time to have it installed for me. It worked flawlessly.

Isle of Skye The Isle of Skye is one of the many beautiful islands on the northwestern coast of Scotland. It was a somewhat difficult drive out there given the tiny, winding, and mountainous roads, but it was well worth the drive. The area was absolutely gorgeous and Caroline found us another spectacular bed and breakfast in which to stay. This one may have actually been my favorite as I'm pretty sure it was just a husband and wife working entirely off of the grid for extra cash (and I do hate governments). There are a ton of randomly exposed pictures in this album because I was experimenting with some HDR photography as well as panoramas.