It’s 2:25 a.m. on Thursday, and I am still hiding out after a week in New Bern. Jet lag apparently will not fade, as I am finding myself up very late and having trouble waking up prior to noon.

I’ve stayed pretty quiet this week, other than shooting a wedding and taking approximately a million photos inside my house, specifically photographing old family photos I’ve dug up from the closet so I can archive them digitally. I spent a lot of time with my mom, brother, and estranged cat, Raphael (who has been living with my mom for the last two years because I’m too scared to fly him across to SF).

This is my mom and my cat.

This is my brother.

The wedding I photographed was that of a good friend from high school, Ellen. Here are a few shots from the day… if you were a guest and want to see the rest of the wedding photos, you’ll be getting a private link from Ellen shortly.

PS – Don’t judge me for my lack of wedding watermark awesomeness. I’ll design a better one at some point in the future.

The family photos I’ve been photographing have been to make THIS:

(You can click the photo to see the whole page.)

I’ve been making memory pages for my entire extended family, including myself. The experience has been pretty freaking amazing – I finally own photos of my Dad (I owned absolutely none prior to this), I saw what my grandfather looked like for the first time (as well as many great-aunts, uncles, and three out of four great-grandparents), have tons of ridiculous photos of my mom and her sisters from the 70s, and have been up with my mom until 3 a.m. every night listening to her tell stories. Honestly, you really need to do this next time you go home. It’s still blowing my mind. I’ll write more about it in the near future.

So tomorrow (I mean today) I’ll be waking up early, and my long-time adventure buddy and ultimate bro Logan (you can click that link to see an old photo of us posing with my childhood piano trophies) is going to pick me up and we’re going to explore the depths of Eastern North Carolina, as we agreed this would be a proper thing for us to do while I’m home. So we’re going to Aurora and exploring fossil fuel pits. I’ll take photos.

PS – I’ll be back in Raleigh tomorrow night, and would like to see all of you RDU folk. You will likely find me somewhere near the intersection of Hargett and Wilmington streets by nightfall, FYI.

That’s all, I’m off to bed.

END!

After a long weekend of airport waiting, flying, and shooting/editing photos until the wee hours of the morning, and attempting to catch up with lots and lots and lots of people I hadn’t seen in nine months, all I wanted to do was nothing. And what better place to do nothing than New Bern, NC?

So I hopped into a car and headed two hours east to my hometown.

[This is my all-too-familiar drive between my two home cities, full of tobacco fields, car dealerships, strip malls, and jesus billboards.]

I spent the majority of the next few days doing things I don’t otherwise get to do:

- Eat disgusting/awesome Southern fast food.

- Hang out with my cat (I’m a long-distance cat owner, btw).

- Hang out with my mom and watch Oprah and HGTV.

One of the particularly exciting things about this vacation is the fact that I’m having a visitor while I’m here – my boyfriend Aaron. I’ve never had a visitor on vacation before. I don’t think there are many circumstances where it is possible. But my visitor was to arrive on Thursday morning and I was to spend the rest of my trip acquainting him with the dirty south.

I spend day one showing Aaron all of my favorite hangouts in Raleigh, including Raleigh Times, Morning Times, Helios, Foundation, Busy Bee, Sosta, etc. I quickly realize my enjoyment of Raleigh revolves completely around food and drink.

After a day in Raleigh, I feel that it’s best to head toward the coast for a proper southern experience. We head out onto Highway 70 with all intentions of arriving in New Bern by early afternoon, but end up on a spontaneous adventure to Nahunta Pork Center instead.

Some context: I have seen billboards for Nahunta Pork Center almost my entire life. Billboard after billboard after billboard on Highway 70, all urging me to go to this mythical place. Everyone who drives this highway knows about Nahunta Pork Center, but I’ve never met anyone who has actually been. So… now might as well be that time. We make the turn. We drive 30 minutes off the highway into rural desolation to find ourselves in the middle of what is basically a giant grocery store, full of every pork product you can imagine. We purchase some ribs and country ham (another first for Aaron), awkwardly take photos while the locals stare, and continue on our way to New Bern.

I should mention that we’re arriving in New Bern on its tricentennial weekend. Yes, New Bern is turning 300. The people are excited, and there are lots of festivities planned. Festivities defined not really by San Francisco standards, but by 300-year-old coastal town standards.

[parade photos courtesy of my mom.]

Parades, symphony concerts, fireworks and the like.

Other than that, we spent most of our time on the water or at the beach or playing with Raphael or eating BBQ. All in all, it was a very very good trip to the south.

Here are a few photos.

See you next year, east coast!

END!

I spent most of my month-long east-coast hiatus hiding in New Bern, the city in which I grew up and where my mother still resides. After a year of incredible chaos, I was really looking forward to nothing more than sitting down on a couch in bumfuck eastern NC, doing my work in solitude and hanging out with no one except my mother and my cat (I’m a long-distance cat owner until I can justify flying Raphael to SF), drinking Bailey’s and watching Oprah.

Of course, after a day or two I began to get stir crazy and began to contact humanity again, as well as take some photos of all you can really photograph in New Bern during the winter – myself, my cat, bear statues, and whoever happened to wander into my mother’s house. Enjoy.

END!

So I had a rather daunting (+ exciting) task ahead of me over the holidays – shooting my first wedding.

The exciting part – Shooting for the Coleman family, who I’ve known for almost half of my lifetime. Seeing and catching up with wonderful people I haven’t seen in years. Seeing the bride, Molly, for the first time since I was fourteen. Taking pictures of beautiful people + fun times.

The daunting part – If you miss a shot, you can’t go back and retake it. If you miss lots of shots/ don’t present a set of incredible, beautiful photos, you are liable for an eternity of resentment for failing to capture the pinnacle of epic photo days. No pressure.

Solution – I decided to chill out and shoot it like I’m there hanging out and just happen to be taking pictures to accompany a story for my blog.

I flew down to New Bern, NC, my hometown, to shoot the wedding at the church in which I grew up, then the reception at The Chelsea, a whopping block from my mom’s house. It was great to see so many faces from my adolescence. Half of folks didn’t recognize me at first. I guess it really has been a while… 8 years or so for some of them.

Ben + Molly were beautiful, and it was amazing to see multiple generations of married children + parents + grandparents, all still completely happy and totally in love. It certainly gives me hope for humanity.

Here are some of my personal faves from the day.

END!

After awaking from my 15-hour couch nap, I was onward to Phase 3 of my trip: hitching a ride to my hometown of New Bern, NC.

My brother was off work for the night and offered to tote me. He would arrive at 1:00. This would all be great, if my belongings weren’t strewn all over Raleigh.

Most of my luggage was stored at friend Sam’s house, which wasn’t of much use, as I hadn’t actually stayed there at all during this trip. As many of you know, planning while traveling isn’t really my thing.

It would be easy to swing by and pick up my stuff, but unfortunately, Sam was nowhere to be found. So Logan and I decided to go search the establishment most likely to find her in – The Busy Bee. I decided to call brother Kane and friend Erika over to meet us for brunch in the meantime.

We found Sam, and we found brunch. I got a key, and we were on our way to find my luggage.

Upon arrival, I spend a good five minutes trying to get in the front door of her apartment with the key she had provided me, but to no avail.

I try and try and try. Kane asks me if I am sure I have the right door. I tell him he is being silly.

I was definitely at the wrong apartment. I’m sure the crowd of people cooking out outside were a bit confused to see me try to break into two adjacent apartments, successfully entering the second one. I hastily grabbed my luggage and we were on our way.

After two hours of observing eastern Carolina’s brilliantly designed storefronts and billboards, we finally arrived in the homeland to find my mother and my baby catchild, Raphael, waiting for us.

Raphael was my partner in crime in Raleigh. He was my only roommate, and we were serious compadres. I gave him to Kane to babysit while I toured the country this summer, and he soon ended up with my mom in New Bern. I had all plans to fly him over to California upon my settling in, but as I predicted, my mother has become quite infatuated with him and is not so ready to give him up. For now, it is probably for the best, as I will probably be touring and traveling quite a bit in the near future… but I do miss him so so much. He is my precious white monstrous yeti cat child.

Raph apparently has a new fun habit of climbing onto the outside edge of the second-story patio, just for shits and giggles. I’m not entirely sure how he hasn’t died yet. But there’s not much you can do other than just let him do it.

Anyway. Enough about the cat.

My one night in New Bern was great. The three of us ate soup, sat on the porch, played fetch with Raph, and nerded out on our computers together until the wee hours of the morning.

The next day I spent my last New Bern meal at none other than Carolina Bagel (yet to find bagels that compare, even in San Francisco), then took a final walk around downtown with the family, shooting some glamour shots here and there. I’m getting them to work on their sweet model poses while I’m gone. All of us will be pros by Christmas.

(PC: Annette Stone)

Goodbye, North Carolina. I love you, but west coast is calling.

END!

Greetings from North Carolina. I write to you as I wait patiently for 4:30 AM, the time I should awake and begin preparing to head to the airport. I have just finished up a week in my glorious home state.

I arrived at approximately 9:49 AM Thursday morning. I had expected ample sleeping time on my red-eye flight, but the fact that I was situated in the middle seat prevented that. And with the token obese-man-with-gas-problem to my left, I was at the optimum level of contentment, I assure you.

Raleigh couldn’t come soon enough. My compadre Sam was kind enough to tote me downtown, and I had things to do.

Day 1: Day of Raleigh clichés.

Objective: Basically do everything I would normally do in my typical Raleigh day prior to moving.

Tasks:
- Do work at Morning Times. Probably buy an iced soy chai latte with a shot of espresso. Maybe a apple brie sandwich as well.
- Go to Sitti (bar where I worked when I lived in Raleigh). Receive back massage from Ken the bartender. Order to-go food (likely a goat cheese and orange salad, chicken kabob, hummus, maybe okra stew, bread and bread and bread) minutes before dinner hours to have access to lunch prices.
- Take to-go food to Blue Martini (other bar where I worked when I lived in Raleigh). Set up elaborate Lebanese food buffet across the bar to be enjoyed exclusively by me and Tara, my homedog/general manager. A Wednesday tradition.
- Have a Dagmar (the martini named after me) at Blue Martini while food settles.
- Go to Raleigh Times for dinner. Likely a BBQ sandwich. Greyhound may also be involved.
- Go to Foundation to check out seasonal drink menu. Pick one. Enjoy.
- Go to Busy Bee. Mandatory order of The Sting and tater tots.
- Go to Landmark for bloody mary or Kriekbeer.

And that I did.

I’m surprised I didn’t take more photos. It may have had something to do with the 80 people I ran into on every corner. I kid you not – I probably caught up with more than 150 people in the first day, just strolling around the neighborhood. Good to be back, Raleigh.

END!