Merry Christmas!

Christmas eve is always the big extended famly celebration at my aunt’s house (locally) which I love. My cousins were all there tonight, aunts uncles … it’s one of my family highlights of each year. Then, the next morning is always a nice Christmas breakfast with my mom, sister, their husbands, etc… It’s good time.

For this week’s picture, we’ll once again feature Amanda. Amanda came to visit last week from Vegas, and we ended up in Hemet by a strange twist of my schedule. There’s this really old abandoned barn that I’ve always wanted to shoot at, so we had a few minutes there. Here are the results…

Oddly, it looks like a wonderfully warm, nice day… but we were freezing our a**es off out there.

…for what? What exactly is it the season for? On one hand, I’m kind of a pessimist about Christmas (at least, Christmas in OC). There’s no snow. There’s very little “holiday cheer.” And there’s an awful lot of stress and commercialism. Seems like what could be a beautiful concept has been perverted into a Hallmark holiday, perfect for retailers and not so perfect for anyone else.

Of course, that’s the pessimist in me. Tonight I had my Forum boat party … I just love all the people in my Forum (including the much-missed M Go), and it was great just to spend time with them. And there’s family event … the friends coming into town just to see you …. great things that truly -are- in the spirit.

Okay, enough philosophizing (yes, it’s a word. I looked it up.) Some random things:

1) Major updates to the website, including all new pictures of Spain and Morocco at www.f8fotos.com.

2) Does anyone watch Sleeper Cell: American Terror? Did you see the finale tonight? What a trip… good show, though, I enjoyed it.

3) A couple of choice pictures from my new computer’s camera are below for your viewing enjoyment. They got quite the laughs tonight on the boat. It’s Tiffany, Stacie, Boaz and Eden:

Sometimes I can’t really decide which picture I like best … so I try and find creative ways to show both. Here’s a new edit from a photoshoot earlier this year. (It’s Amanda from Las Vegas again). I’ve “thumbnailed” it this time so you can see it a little bigger than normal. Just click on it. (I don’t really know how that works through RSS … anyone care to let me know the difference?)