This did not come from my fone. But it is cool anyway. When I have kids, every waking moment of their lives is likely to be captured in digital video, audio and still images. There are lots of analog photos of me as a child, but no analog video (i.e. Super 8) that I am aware of. However, my mom recently dug up an analog tape of a small family gathering for her father's birthday in October of 1975, when I was about 2.5 years old. This is pretty cool because it's the only audio recording I'm aware of me as a young child. So here it is as an MP3.

It's a 10 minute tape, 5 minutes per side, and the conversation is recorded on one side only. There is tape noise and then some weird newsreel recording at the beginning (maybe someone watching t.v.?), then you can hear my grandmother trying to get me to sing happy birthday to my grandfather, and then it basically devolves into a conversation between my dad and my grandfather about the pros and cons of a new winter coat that my dad has recently purchased. You can hear my squeaky voice here and there, most notably when refusing to give my grandfather a birthday kiss then again when I have to pee, which is the only time anyone seems to pay any attention to me. Even then the old men are still droning on about the coat's various features. Musta been a great coat...

It takes a massive crane and a bunch of surly workmen to bring the Christmas spirit to downtown Portland.

At Settepani in Harlem. Cafe au lait done properly.

The coffee shop at Borders in Ramsey, NJ managed to beat out most so-called cafes I've been to lately on the au lait front. The cafe au lait here had a tiny bit of froth, but for the most part was just good old coffee with milk. Message to coffee shop owners: when Borders knows more about coffee than you do it's time to read a book (like the dictionary) or something.

Cafe au lait with frothed milk. You know how this makes me feel.

I am throwing the avocado pit away and dumping the gross water in my nice cocktail glass down the drain. I have no one to blame for this failure but myself.

You can't really see it (but what the hell? all these pictures suck anyway), but this is actually a local tv crew doing a "news" story about the holiday lights I mentioned a few posts ago. I'm not the only one who's run out of ideas for stuff to do around here.

The glass is more than half empty. And there is way too much pulp in this Tropicana "Grovestand" OJ. Like adding leftover pulp from other OJ blends is supposed to make me think this is somehow a more "authentic" OJ experience?

I told you it was winter here. You never listen to me. As soon as Christmas-tree lights are strung haphazardly across leafless trees, that means it's winter.

It is winter in Portland now. Soon they will tear down this beautiful meat processing plant to make way for an ugly hotel.